Company AVA Solar Inc.

• Author: Peterson, Eric
• Position: Small biz TECH STARTUP

INITIAL LIGHT BULB: Based on the pioneering solar-panel technology developed and patented by Colorado State University mechanical engineering professor W.S. Samprath, AVA Solar is ready to join the renewable energy rush.

"The technology has been incubating in one of CSU's engineering labs for about 16 years," said Russ Kanjorski, AVA Solar's director of strategic planning. The company's ultimate goal, said Kanjorski, is "a low-cost solar solution that could make a meaningful impact on the world's energy situation."

Samprath, CEO Pascal Noronha and two other co-founders on the CSU faculty--Kurt Barth and Al Enzenroth--have an aggressive agenda to bring their technology to market by the end of 2009, after building a $100 million factory in northern Colorado later this year.

IN A NUTSHELL: Rather than using crystal silicone, AVA's solar panels utilize cadmium telluride. "It's a much better semiconductor for this purpose than silicone, so they can use a hundred times less material with a hundred times lower purity," Kanjorski said. "The breakthrough is the manufacturing process itself: The entire process happens in one vacuum chamber--it's all dry, and it's all automated."

During their 16 years of research and development at CSU, Samprath and his collaborators focused on the big picture as they tinkered with the little details on their cadmium-telluride panels. "They knew it could be scaled up," Kanjorski said. "Anything that would interfere with the scale-up to a large industrial scale, they ignored. As we grow ... you see the costs collapse."

Kanjorski estimated that AVA Solar's panels would cost less than $1 per watt, much less than today's crystal silicone norm of $3 or the $2 level that most analysts say is the target for "grid parity," where solar-generated electricity costs the same as it would to buy it from power plants.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"With solar, your costs depend on where you are and how much energy costs in...