Sherman Boyd

The single greatest problem with solar energy has been getting the cost of solar panels down to the point at which they pay for themselves in a short time. Current solar technology is based on expensive silicon technology, however several companies are working on a cheaper process, thin film solar cells.

I’ve been watching Nanosolar ever since I read this Slashdot article and the corresponding article in the Hindu. Nanosolar has been real quiet lately, and I’ve been getting worried that we will never see these cheap solar cells. After watching for news for about six months I finally contacted Nanosolar to find out for myself. An email interview was arranged and Martin Roscheisen emailed this response with remarkable speed:

1) A little about yourself: I’ve read the official stuff on the site and what I’ve found on the web, but I’m unclear on a lot of things.
How old are you? Where do you live? What precisely is your role at Nanosolar, researcher or more administrative? What other things are important to you, aside from Nanosolar?

I’m 37 and live in San Francisco. Here’s my house…they actually put it onto the cover of Dwell in Jan: http://www.rmartinr.com/Dwell.htm

My role at Nanosolar is to lead the team in the right direction as a company. I don’t do adminstration. I work very closely with our team which is mostly engineers right now. I’ve always been very involved in all aspects of the technology, whether the overall choices or other key items. I’m also spending a good chunk of time with customers. I know how to make decisions in situations when there’s only very partial information and/or very little time available to make such decisions — and build a company and a business from nothing much there.

Other things important to me: I like architecture (see above).

2) What are the primary challenges Nanosolar is facing right now?

We have the process and the capital to deliver the products we want…so our present focus is on building a factory that delivers the production capacity we want.

3) Why has Nanosolar been so quiet lately? For reasons of secrecy or strategy?

We do not yet have any PR or marketing person on our team, and we’re very much focused on product and production development. So if we’re quiet, the main reason for this is that we’re simply busy! Things are going very very well. Everything is coming together very nicely. But since you have reminded me, we should probably announce a few things we’ve recently accomplished.

4) When will your product reach the market? 2007? Will the product be offered to large commercial interests before it is available to residential customers?

We have prototype products now; we’re testing them very thoroughly in environmental chambers and outdoors. The larger volumes will be available from our production fab in 2007, yes.

So there you have it, sit tight and we will have practical solar by 2007!