Perovskite solar has promised a revolution for over a decade, so is it finally real? Matt and Sean talk with Joel Jean, co-founder and CEO of Swift Solar, the US startup spun out of MIT and Stanford. Joel explains how stacking a perovskite film on top of silicon lifts a solar cell's efficiency ceiling from 30 percent to about 45 percent. He also breaks down the three "tooth fairies" every new solar technology has to solve: performance, lifetime, and cost. So is perovskite tandem solar finally ready for your roof? Or is 25 year durability still one miracle away?
Chapters
- 00:00: Intro
- 03:20: Joel Jean Interview
- 41:02: The Super Soaker Mailbag
Transcript
Intro
Joel Jean: So I had another colleague at MIT who he would say, like, okay, how many tooth fairies does it take to get this thing to work? Meaning, like, how many, like, magical things have to happen in the science, in the technology, in the market, or whatever does it take to really make this thing real? Our kind of rule of thumb was like, you know, if you have one tooth fairy, that's actually like, very self. Well, we solve, like, you know, we make miracles happen all the time. If it takes two tooth fairies, you got to be a little bit skeptical. And if it's three or more, then you're like, oh, man. Like this. This is probably, you know, let's wait for the science to go further.
Sean Ferrell: Today on Still To Be Determined, we're going to talk about making solar panels right next door to where you need them. That's right. We're going to be talking about manufacturing in the good old US Of A. But it's not going to be Matt and I just kind of speculating about how one might go about doing that. No, it's going to be better than that. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Still to be Determined. This is, of course, the sister podcast to Undecided with Matt Ferrell. Matt takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And here on Still To Be Determined, we follow up on those conversations from Undecided, but we also sometimes dive off on our own and have conversations with people who really know what they're talking about. And today is one of those days. I'm Sean Ferrell. I'm a writer. I write some sci fi, I write some horror. As a matter of fact, I've got a horror novel in the Fields We Thirst, coming out in 2026. So more information as that becomes available. And with me, as always, is the aforementioned Matt. He is my younger brother. So if you're looking at the screen at YouTube and you're like, why do I have double vision? You don't. It's just Matt. How you doing, Matt?
Matt Ferrell: I don't. I know people hate it when we talk about weather, Sean, but it is.
Sean Ferrell: Oh, she's hot.
Matt Ferrell: She's so hot. We're in a heat wave.
Sean Ferrell: It's so hot.
Matt Ferrell: It is. Whoa.
Sean Ferrell: Yes. As I mentioned to Matt, feels like
Matt Ferrell: 108 degrees Fahrenheit here, everybody. And, yes, I said Fahrenheit. I live in the United States. I do not do metric.
Sean Ferrell: As I mentioned to Matt, before we started recording, I had some appointments, unfortunately, so I was walking all over Brooklyn before I came back here to then record. I may never stop sweating. I'm just worried that that will happen. So, not to be too gross, but that's the reality. Today we're excited to share our conversation that we had with Joel Jean. Joel is the co founder and CEO of Swift Solar, which is a US Perovskite tandem solar startup. It was spun out of projects from MIT and Stanford, and he has spent his entire career on building a bridge between perovskite lab science and actual working solar panels that you could put on your home or companies might put into solar production fields. In March of 2026, Swift acquired Meyer Berger, which was a European manufacturer, and it was with the intention of producing perovskite solar panels. And here in the US Joel was kind enough to sit down to talk to us about all of this, and it was quite a conversation. Keep an eye out for the gravel discussion, which was my favorite part. Here now is our conversation with Joel Jean.
Joel Jean Interview
Matt Ferrell: Hi, Joel, thanks so much for joining Sean and I to talk solar, perovskites, all that kind of stuff. I'm really happy to have you here.
Joel Jean: Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks.
Matt Ferrell: Just want to set a baseline for everybody that's going to be listening or watching this. Just like, what are perovskites and why. Why are so many people in the solar industry excited about perovskites?
Joel Jean: Great question. Yeah. So, in short, perovskites are a new kind of semiconductor material that is all the rage in the solar industry right now, mainly because it is the first time we've had a new solar technology that can pair with an existing technology and boosted performance beyond the fundamental limits of what traditional technology can do. So specifically, like the vast majority of the solar market today is silicon. And when you put a perovskite thin film solar cell on top of a silicon solar cell, you can make a cell that basically boosts the theoretical performance limit from 30% to about 45%. So it's like the most fundamental thing about a solar cell, that it can convert sunlight to electricity. It can do that more efficiently by up to 50% relative prop size, can be tuned to specific kind of like wavelengths of light, so it can be complimentary to the silicon.
That's the main feature that lets you know, yeah, make this what we call a tandem cell, this like two layer cell. So basically, if you had a perovskite and it absorbed the exact same part of the solar spectrum as silicon, it would not help you to stack it on top of silicon. Having two layers doesn't help you if you're. You have two cells that do the same thing. What you really want is two cells that have, are complimentary, right? One's absorbing part of the spectrum more efficiently, the other one's absorbing the other part of the spectrum more efficiently and converting that. So that's what perovskites can do is like you can change the material composition. Different kinds of, you know, organic and inorganic materials that you use to make this perovskite. That changes the absorption spectrum of the material, so it changes the colors of light that it absorbs. And that translates to ultimately, you know, a complimentary material to silicon.
Sean Ferrell: So I'm going to jump in here and Matt and I are basically demonstrating the good cop, bad cop of our brotherly relationship. Because he jumps in and he's just like, science, science, technology. Tell me all about that. And I'm going to, I'm going to say like, hey, well how about your, your personal background? How did you. What is your story into this work? And I know that you studied at MIT and you've jumped off from there into founding a company and acquiring another. So why don't you tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are right now.
Joel Jean: Is that the bad cop question or is that the good cop question?
Sean Ferrell: It depends on how you. I like to think of it as the good cop stuff, but yeah, I completely understand if you feel it's a bad cop.
Joel Jean: Yeah. So, yeah, I did study at MIT. That was where I did my PhD and kind of where I really got started working on these new solar cell materials, including perovskites. But I guess to go a little further back, I started working on solar actually in undergrad at Stanford. I was studying electrical engineering and working on research on this kind of weird systems for making solar. High temperature solar systems. So traditionally, like a solar cell, you bring it to high temperature, you know, multiple hundreds of degrees Celsius. Like a traditional, like thermal engine. Right. Or like a solar thermal system. And the solar cell just like sucks. Right? It can't, can't work well. So we're working on kind of a new kind of conversion system that can basically take solar energy and can like pair it with a thermal system and make the whole thing more efficient. So you could like essentially like run this thing on light and like the heat from, let's say like a, a tradition like a natural gas turbine or like some other thermal power plant and make like a more efficient combined system called photon enhanced thermodynamic emission. I could go get very nerdy on that one.
Sean Ferrell: The good cop would like that. If you went nerdy on that. So as much detail as you might
Joel Jean: like, that's like maybe neither here nor there. The reason I was looking at that and excited about it was like at the time it was actually a point where it didn't feel like there was very much innovation in solar, you know. And like if you look at the industry overall, we've been using the same technology, silicon, at the core of it, since 1954. Right. The first solar cell, Bell Labs, the 60s, 70s, 80s, we started sending solar cells to space, powering satellites.
Matt Ferrell: Right.
Joel Jean: And then on Earth, like in the 70s, during the oil crisis, we started investing heavily into R and D. All these new technologies came along. But still it can remain kind of like the foundation in the middle of everything. Maybe 2011, 2012. When finally this new opportunity came along, this new material came along, right. Perovskites. And I was actually, I'd started my PhD at MIT at that time and was working on a different kind of new material called quantum dots, which Matt, maybe you'll get excited about. Oh yeah, yeah. So, so colloidal quantum dots, right. It's like it also was like a little bit hyped up partly because it's just like nerdy cool. So these were like little quantum confined nanoparticles. And what that means, it's like a little chunk of semiconductor about 2 to 3 to 4 nanometers in diameter. When you make it that small, you're actually confining the electron wave function in a way that basically changes the color of light that these things absorb and emit. Usually you have to change the composition of material to change the colors of light it absorbs. With this, you could change the size of it. And just by changing how long you like run this reaction in solution, you can change the color. So you literally like are growing these little magical crystals that change color. Which sounds kind of like we're on drugs or something, right? It's pretty cool. And they're actually used in TVs today. So like to get these really, really bright colors, like pure colors, they're used to, to enhance like the displays that we see, like OLED displays are often like quantum dot enhanced these days.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, I was going to say the, the quantum dot solar is still being kind of researched and developed from what I understand.
Joel Jean: Yeah, exactly. So the reason they're interesting is like instead of changing the material, you change the size. And that means you can like quickly tune materials to make again these multi junction cells, right. Where you're making like different kinds of like complimentary materials without much complexity because you're just kind of like tuning them. So we thought that was really cool. We did a lot of research on that. Spent many years, I spent many years kind of like making this, frankly, kind of crappy solar cells, but with really cool, like, physical properties. So they were like, crappy meaning, like, they were like 3 to 5% efficient, right? So like 3 to 5 is like pretty crappy compared to 25 that you get from silicon today. And this is like, not unusual. So you'll, there's like thousands of grad students around the world making solar cells that like, traditionally are like 3 to 5, at most 10% efficient. Trying to break through, like 10%, maybe 15. And at the time we were kind of like, if you can make a 10% solar cell, that's like, really good for a new material. And then in 2012, props dates came along and they were like, instantly 10%, like, first paper, 10%. So like, wow, that's. That's impressive. And that told you something about kind of how promising this material was. Because even just like with relatively little optimization, like a couple groups in the world working on it, it was already at 10%. Within five years, it had hit 20%. And compare that to Silicon took 20, 30 years to get to 20% efficiency. So it really is just kind of taking the world by storm. Sorry. I keep leaning back towards Matt's preference of talking about technology, but I was at MIT.
Sean Ferrell: That was fun. I was going to ask in that vein. It's interesting to me. You talk about Perovskite showed up and it was already, it was already at that 10%. You have a foot in, like, all the research, and as you've just demonstrated, you know, geeking out about, like, here's the science, let's talk these numbers. And you also, you founded a company and you're looking at the world and ways to take that research and put it into the world. Were you aware as you were doing all these studies and looking at all this stuff and you talked about, like, oh, it'd be great to hit that 10% mark. And then something showed up that was just kind of like dirt off its shoulder? I'm already at 10%. Did you see the world at the layman's level, meaning me? Did you see the response that was. That can't be true. Were you aware of a, of the kind of public pushback that says, oh, this is all snake oil. Anytime you see new announcements come out and they're like, I'll believe it when I see it. I'll believe it when it's on my roof. I'll believe it when I'm holding it in my hands. Were you aware of that kind of thing? And is that a part of where you are in your businesses as you're moving forward? Are you finding there's some difficulty for people to actually accept that what you're trying to do can be done?
Joel Jean: Just to clarify, did you have that reaction or experience that reaction in the 2010s when you first heard about perovskites?
Sean Ferrell: I'm, I'm the sort of person who, like I, when I'm informed, I question the source. And luckily for me, I've got this guy who I trust. So he shows up and he's just like, look at this crazy technology. It's doing all these things and it's going to change solar for forever. And my response was, I trust the source because I know he goes to sources that are trustworthy. But then we do these videos and we have these conversations and people show up in our comments and say, yeah, it'll never happen, this is never going to work. We can't replace X, Y or Z. We need petroleum forever or it's wind power is garbage. Like the, the arguments that come out are in the form of I'll believe it when I see it. And I'm just curious if from your perspective, you had that kind of response, you saw that kind of response as these things were happening around you and that news coming out of like, here comes Perovskites. It's going to change everything forever. Were you or maybe people in the same field with you saying, like, how come nobody believes this?
Joel Jean: It's a good question. I think it's, it's actually a good and natural response to be skeptical, especially having been on the other side of this. Right. Like as a university researcher, like you both have the advantage of having like a very, very deep understanding of the technology and like science and kind of seeing what's possible and like a really myopic view of like what it takes to bring something to real life, commercial scale, economic, and bring it really to the market successfully. So those two things are both true at the same time. And university press offices love to write articles that are like, this is going to change the world of, you know, X, Y or Z forever. And you know, it's already there, it's ready to scale. We kind of on the other side are kind of like, well, it's going to be a decade minimum, right? Like, right. That, that's just like how long technologies Take to get to market. My older advisor used to say, you know, it took 10 years for Velcro to reach the market. Like, how is it going to take less than 10 years for any other technology? And you do see that, right? It takes a decade for any new high tech kind of product to get from lab to fab. Um, so that's definitely like on order of magnitude, right? Like the right kind of expectation. You know, I also had another, you know, colleague at MIT who is a physics professor, right. And his, we, we co authored this like, study together on solar, which I can get into.
But the, he would say, like, okay, how many tooth fairies does it take to get this thing to work? Meaning, like, how many like magical things have to happen in the science, in the technology, in the market or whatever does it take to really make this thing real? Our kind of rule of thumb was like, you know, if you have one tooth fairy that's actually like very solvable, we solve like, you know, we make miracles happen all the time. If it takes two tooth fairies, you gotta be a little bit skeptical. And if it's three or more, then you're like, oh man, like this, this is probably, you know, let's wait for the science to go further.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, no, I, I love that explanation. That is fantastic. Because one of the kind of follow ups to this was you and I talked earlier about how the development of technologies like this. I think there's a disconnect between like the layman, the public, and what people who are in the know who are doing it. There's a disconnect in how long people expect this stuff to take. So you hear, oh, these perovskite advances, oh, they just broke a world record. They're doing 35% efficiency now. We're not going to see that in a panel that's available that I could put on my roof for probably a decade at the earliest. But there's a disconnect in the public. So it creates this skepticism of like, you hear about it, but then three years go by and you've never heard about it again. So it's all snake oil. And it creates this kind of negative feedback loop. Even though there was no lying going on. It's just a disconnect in the understanding and you're like in it right now of taking something that you talked about. It was 10% when it came onto the scene and then it's been ramping up so fast compared to silicon. Could you kind of talk a little bit more about like, why does it take so long? Basically, I guess that's the question I'm kind of asking. Why does it take so long?
Joel Jean: Yeah. So I'm going to run with this tooth fairy thing for a little bit. So to answer that,
Matt Ferrell: I think that's a good way to go.
Joel Jean: There's sort of like three possible tooth fairies for making a new solar cell work in the market. And you kind of have to like check three boxes. One is performance, second one is lifetime, third one is cost. If you can check all three performance, lifetime and cost, you're golden. There's no one who doesn't want a higher performance, long lived, low cost product. Right. If you, if you can make those work, you're good. And in solar traditionally, it's always been really, really hard for a technology to check all three. There's literally never been a technology that's checked all three compared to the incumbent. So you talk about cadmium telluride or CIGs or organics or quantum dots, like all these new materials that you may have heard, heard about as like the next big thing, all of those were actually lower performance than silicon and remain lower performance than silicon. So just at the core level, they have to win on cost and you still have to cross the lifetime barrier. Kind of like I alluded to earlier, the exciting thing about perovskites is for the first time you have something that actually outperforms silicon. So it at least makes the carrot kind of, you know, makes the juice worth the squeeze. So that's not a tooth fairy for perovskites. That's, that's the exciting piece. Ten years ago, the two remaining tooth fairies were can you make it last for 25 plus years in the field and then can you make it at scale, cost effectively? So those were kind of like I would call two reasonably, you know, scary imaginary tooth fairies. The first one being harder than the second one, but both being very serious, serious barriers to commercialization. So we founded Swift in 2017 to tackle those problems. And from the very beginning, we set the first world record at Swift, actually the founders on the perovskite silicon tandem technology.
But then we stopped chasing efficiency altogether and we were like, how did we actually solve these two things? It's like these are the two fairies, right, that we need to make real. That's a roundabout way to get back to your question of why did it take so long? It's like the lab part of proving out efficiency is fast. You can make a solar cell and test it in one day and you can hit 20, 25% efficiency. 20% efficiency. Let's say, if you have the tools in a few weeks, right? So, like, that's a quick process. That's going to be a cell that's this big, you know, 1 square centimeter, and it's going to degrade very quickly, like days or weeks at best. So the hard part is making it last for 30 years. And the hard part is also making it reproducible and producible at scale at low cost, meaning using, like, cheap enough materials, having the machines that can do it day in, day out with high yield. Those two things are basically what we spent 10 years working on.
Matt Ferrell: One of those tooth fairies, I think is really important because it's like, it comes up a lot in the comments whenever I've talked about perovskites, which is the longevity. Because like, you. You see these reports, like you just mentioned, hey, we hit 35% efficiency. It would never last more than a couple of years at best. And so people have this mindset of, well, perovskites will not last. They won't last 25, 30 years. But you just brought up. It's about solving that tooth fairy, coming up with engineering that can make it last as long. So have, have you cracked that nut? Have, have. Has the industry figured that out? Is there a way to make perovskites last 25 years?
Joel Jean: It's a great, great question. So you're totally right. Like, in the early days, it was. There's this, like, kind of, I don't know, apocryphal story, kind of like a real story, honestly. Like, you, You. You take the solar cell, you make it, and then you have to run across the lab to test it, otherwise it degrades, right? It's like people, right? It's like, well, that sucks. That, like, do you really want that kind of a solar cell? And I think that stuck too long. The reality is, like, it started out like that, but relatively quickly, right? Like, you improve by orders of magnitudes. The lifetime went from, you know, hours to days to weeks to months. Very like, relatively quickly. What we've been able to do from, like, basically building an understanding of the ways that. That the material and the cells can degrade, we've been able to kind of like, knock down those. Those problems. So, for example, oh, I know that this material will face segregate. So some of the material will kind of, like, some of the atoms will go in this direction and some will go this direction. So let's engineer that material, change the composition in a way that it doesn't do that. Or maybe you'll have a situation where you have some reaction with the electrode that you put on the metal that you put on to extract the charges. So change the material or put a buffer layer in between so you block the ions from actually contacting that material. And these kinds of like, you know, tens, hundreds of like changes basically let you step up the, the stability of the lifetime. Like kind of little by little or big steps at a time.
So you, you had orders of magnitude to go, right? So originally if you, if you're talking about, okay, I started out with like minutes, right? Minutes, then you have like five orders of magnitude of time to get to like a year, right? And then you have another two orders of magnitude, you get to 30 plus years. I mean if you think about like, okay, I have like six day orders of magnitude to go. You know, back in 2016, 17, we were probably at, you know, we had maybe like knocked down two to four of those orders of magnitude and in the last three years probably got another three, four orders of magnitude, right. Let's say the last five years. So then you're kind of like, okay, well we're like getting, you know, we've seen, we've made all these improvements. There's maybe another, you know, like non trivial amount of work to, to go. But we're like actually very, very close in writ large, right? And if you talk about like fusion, where you're talking about this triple product and you have to go like whatever 10, 15 orders of magnitude, like it's like a similar thing, but actually like far fewer tooth fairies to actually take this to go 25 years. Then it takes fusion to go to, you know, and cost effective, right. And energy positive. And just one other perspective here is like if you look at the history of solar, we've seen silicon, we've seen cadmium telluride, we've seen cigs, we've seen organics go, all of them early years go from one year lifetimes to now 20 plus year lifetimes over the course of decades plus of engineering, right. And that's happened with every technology that has reached commercial scale.
That gives some comfort, right? If you, if you take the long view that like with the right engineering and the right science behind this, you can actually drive this thing almost anything you can, we can like human ingenuity, right? We can figure out how to make these things basics last.
Matt Ferrell: These are surmountable problems. It's just going to take a little time to figure some of them out. Exactly. Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: So you've been looking at the ways that you can make a major leap forward in the research and the technology itself. But you've also been doing the build out of a business and looking at taking this to customers. You've also coupled that with wanting to manufacture in the United States. Do you want to talk a little bit about the thought process behind we want to do a thing and we want to do it here because those two things in the past, I'd say 50 years haven't always held hands in that way. So do you want to talk a little bit about your thinking about why you, you, you're taking that approach?
Joel Jean: Yeah, I mean we have to face that head on. Right. Like the, the solar industry globally has not been very successful aside from in China when it comes to manufacturing. Right. And for many years like I thought that was the right move like as a, from a like sustainability climate standpoint, it's like manufacture wherever you can cheapest and deploy it everywhere. Right. I think what we've seen is that both in the US and around the world we're seeing this increasing trend recognition that if you don't manufacture the products to decarbonize or to, to drive any kind of industrial transformation, it's not going to be a sustainable transformation politically, economically, like innovation wise. If you don't have the manufacturing, you can't innovate on the technology. Right. If you don't have the jobs, you won't get the political support to deploy. And if you don't have it locally and it's a critical part of your supply chain or industry or defense, like you know, complex like you basically are not going to have national security. Right. You're not going to have supply chain security or energy security which is the foundation for everything that we, that we build. AI or anything more exciting that we want to do in the economy relies on having energy. For better or for worse. That's what we've seen, you know, the US and many other countries start to do is try to reshore, re industrialize, bring manufacturing back home. I would say it's for the better. I think it's something that needs to happen personally for the long term, even if it'll be painful and more expensive short term. It's what China did 20 years ago in the last 10 years. Right. Like to, to make their domestic industry the strongest in the world, frankly in solar and EVs and batteries and robotics and else other technologies.
I think now that that is happening we're very well placed to basically take advantage of that and help support that reshoring. Right. So we started the company in the US under Trump 1.0. And at a time climate was like taking a hit, green technology, clean tech was taking a hit. But we had the same thesis, right, that long term, like manufacturing, superior technology was the way to leapfrog existing technology, leapfrog Chinese manufacturing and really strengthen the industrial base. You know, there's been ups and downs, but I think that's played out with our continued kind of trade protections, domestic manufacturing incentives. Now to the point where there's a massive, massive premium on domestic produced solar panels, right? Cells and panels. If you recent news, it's like that, that premium only goes up and up and up because people want to have the secure supply chain, they want to have the domestic product. And the incentives. Of course, we've been developing it domestically for so long. We have had an opportunity now where we just acquired the leading European manufacturer of solar, right, like silicon solar.
And the reason we did that was that it plays right into this opportunity, this window of opportunity for us because silicon is the foundation for this peroxide tandem, this next generation technology we now have kind of both the foundation and the next generation took under one roof.
Matt Ferrell: You guys just acquired a major European solar manufacturer. What, what, how one, how did that happen? And what, what are you getting out of the deal?
Joel Jean: Yeah, so Meyer Berger was the leading solar manufacturer in Europe and has been, you know, 70 year old company. They actually were started a year before the solar cell was first invented. They've been around for a long, long time. Yeah, 50s, 53. But they started out not in solar naturally. They're, you know, Swiss equipment manufacturer, went into solar and became kind of this like foundational supplier to the solar industry, making, you know, wire saws for the, for the industry over decades, right. The 90s, 2000s, and eventually pivoted into making solar cells and modules directly. So in like 2020, they started becoming a direct manufacturer of, of solar. They had challenges because in Europe the solar market is not protected. And there hasn't been this recognition of the importance of onshoring manufacturing. It's really been tough to compete as a manufacturer in Europe against Chinese imports, which are very cheap, largely subsidized. But also the Chinese industry, as we know, is massive, huge supply chain, very efficient, very good at what they do. So they just couldn't compete on cost. Right. So Meyer Burger was struggling and ultimately had to shut its doors about two years ago. And so their, their assets were up for grabs. And we recognized last year that there was an opportunity early the beginning of this year that there's a really unique fit here with Swift's technology. What we've been building because we make a perovskite on silicon tandem where the a, it's a silicon cell on the bottom and a perovskite cell on top. And we've always focused on the perovskite cell, but the bottom cell is also really important.
So yeah, we've worked with partners in the past, but now with it, with Meyer Berger’s technology, it turns out that their heterojunction technology is actually kind of the, the best type of technology for making these tandem cells on best because the, the bottom cell particularly is particularly well suited. We've, we write papers and stuff on this, but basically it's a, it's a very good partner, very complimentary partner to a Perovskite. By acquiring their equipment and their global IP portfolio and their core team, we've been able to bring kind of the full stack together under one roof. Right. Both the silicon and the perovskite which together is like to us like a very clear step towards the solar manufacturer of the future. Right. You need those two parts to make this next generation technology work. And we're now very well positioned with kind of the best of European silicon, with the best of American perovskites to bring it together to make the best tandems.
Matt Ferrell: It's the peanut butter and jelly of the solar kind of mashup is kind of what happened here.
Joel Jean: Exactly, exactly.
Sean Ferrell: Okay, what are the markers that you're keeping an eye on to see that perovskite has landed, that it's where it needs to be to get a foothold, and then what do you anticipate seeing? And of course this is all speculative at this point, but are you anticipating a point in the future where perovskites will overtake or will we have multiple options in the market where some people will simply say, like, cheaper to grab these, no perovskite needed. I only have limited need versus those that might be the higher end, but a little more expensive perhaps to meet other people's demands that might be higher.
Joel Jean: I think if we're successful, I'm gonna start from the end. So if we're successful, the, the end game is gonna be all Perovskites. Like perovskites will be more efficient, cheaper and just as long lived if we're, if we're successful.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Joel Jean: So that combination will mean that the whole industry will shift towards that. The same way we've seen the industry shift from, you know, originally like traditional silicon to kind of pass faded contacts. You know, aluminum back surface field to PERC technology to now, you know, Topcon and header junction technologies from back contacts. So it's seen these wholesale shifts where almost all of the kind of global capacity shifts like over time right into the next generation to get those extra few percentage points of performance. And we're fully expecting to see that same thing happen with perovskites. That being said, it's, it's a new material system altogether and it's going to take time to get to that end game. To your question, I think I would see the sort of bellwether as like bankability and that's a kind of like jargony word in the industry. Right. But bankability for perovskites is really the key threshold. Can we make this technology, this product so low risk that a bank is willing to basically finance a project that uses these panels? Right. So if that's the case, if you can make these panels in the product and the company making it bankable, then every utility skill, solar developer in the world is going to choose this product because they can get their project finance on it. And clearly if it's higher performance, it gives them better economics. Better economics through, you know, per watt you, you get more watts out per panel. So that means less racking, less land, less wiring. All, you know, everything's cheaper per watt and per kilowatt hour. So that, so that's like where we're headed. And that bankability question I think is really what we've really been moving towards. What does bankability take? It means you need to have, you know, significant proof that these panels are going to last as long as you say they're going to last.
So 25 plus years. Meaning you have to have lab testing, you have to have field data, you have to have factory audits that prove out the manufacturing process and these like reliability claims. Right. So getting to all of that is the next step for pretty much all the players in the industry. I wouldn't call that a tooth fairy. I'd call that like kind of a sort of techno economic challenge that if you solve the tooth fairies, you'll eventually hit it's a matter of time. And we think that we're like well on our way towards that. And in particular because we made this acquisition, we have a very smooth path towards that with the silicon technology that's been around for decades, that's already proven in the field. So we already have a bankable bottom technology and that can deploy on its own. And then as the perovskites mature, we can start to deploy more of the perovskite tandem product in the same format to the same customers. And those customers are excited to take those perovskite tandems because they know we can always back it up with our silicon product if needed.
Sean Ferrell: Right.
Joel Jean: And the tandem gives them extra performance and benefits, so it's just a boost for them. So we think that this is like the most proven, most bankable way to get for perovskite tandems to scale successfully in the US.
Sean Ferrell: Just out of curiosity, I know Matt has a follow up question, but just out of curiosity, the longevity testing is that like, I picture a lab with people wearing white lab coats, holding clipboards, and somebody is throwing buckets of gravel on top of a solar panel. And then you're taking it outside to see if it works. Is that, is there anything like that going on? And if it is, can I volunteer to be a part of it? Because it's sounds like it could be a lot of fun.
Joel Jean: That would be super fun.
Matt Ferrell: Throwing gravel and then writing notes down.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, just jotting stuff down.
Joel Jean: There's kind of an equivalent. Right. I don't know that anyone throws gravel, but giant ice balls, like hail testing is definitely a thing. Ice guns. So there's like that kind of test.
Sean Ferrell: Wow, it's getting better and better.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: That's awesome.
Joel Jean: Yeah, there's that kind of testing. A lot of those, like, more traditional sort of like panel level tests are kind of, I would say, like lower risk actually, because, you know, the moment you put a perovskite into a panel, those kind of mechanical things are a little bit less different from traditional solar. What's more different is the chemistry inside it. Right. It's like the perovskite kind of. How does it do under UV light? How does it do under high temperatures, under, you know, humidity and things like that. So a lot of our testing just to like paint a picture is like there's two levels of it. There's one level that's in the lab, we call that accelerated testing, accelerated lifetime testing. And that involves things like putting your solar cells or panels at high temperature, under light, under intense UV continuously, or putting it in a chamber that cycles the humidity from high to low humidity over and over and over, or cycles the temperature high and low over and over and over. It's a way to accelerate like, you know, many days in one day. Right, right. So that, that's like kind of the baseline testing that we do. And that is like the white lab coat, gloves, safety glasses.
Matt Ferrell: Right.
Joel Jean: That's level one and then level Two is what we've also been doing over the years is putting panels into the field, right? And then that's like the, the real rubber meets the road kind of moment. We put panels out in the field with national labs and we put them out in the field with customers basically who are testing these things under real conditions, not accelerated real conditions. Because you have these combined effects. You might be humid and hot and have UV, right. Or it might be freezing one day, but still have a lot of sun. Like these conditions that you can't really like fully tease out in the lab, right? So it's sort of, you need both to really prove this out. And it's the latter one where you have these kind of like weird, you have hail sometimes you have rain, you have, you know, what, what have you, clouds, random partial shading and things like that. So you kind of see all of that across these two levels of testing. And ultimately you have to survive both with flying colors.
Matt Ferrell: My follow up question was going to be with new technologies like this, as they get rolled out, there's always the who's going to be the first customer that's going to be like, yeah, I'll, I'll risk buying this new kind of somewhat unproven product. You're seeing the battery market. Like some battery companies are targeting the military because they have deep pockets and they're willing to like push the envelope to get the very best or data centers or whatever your customer base is. Who do you think in the end, not necessarily just for you guys, but just the perovskite tandem cell industry. Who do you think those first customers are going to be that will be helping to kind of like grow the industry? Because they're more, they're more willing to take those risks on a new technology because of the benefits they get. So, so the cost analysis for them makes more sense. Who do you think is that's going to be?
Joel Jean: I think what we're seeing is many different solar buyers being interested in the technology. Everyone is like, can you get me more efficiency? Right. Whether that's the DOD or a utility scale buyer or residential solar buyer or in space. All of these folks want a higher efficiency or lower cost kind of product. The kind of early adopters in a kind of weird way are the, are also the very conservative, like utility scale solar customers. There's kind of an interesting match there because they look forward. They have a pipeline of projects that they're developing over many years. So they have projects they know are coming in 28, 29, 30, right. Multiple years out and they know that they're going to need modules in that timeframe. They also have the scale and the like kind of sophistication to evaluate new technologies. They're, they're buying, you know, hundreds of megawatts, like hundreds of millions of dollars worth of product. So they know, they, they, they, they know that they need to like really understand this, the landscape and what products are out there, which ones are reliable, which companies are going to be around. So they actually do their diligence. And we like that because that means that they're going to like pick quality, right? They're going, they're going to be looking for the right partners long term and they're going to be sophisticated enough to kind of help us actually get to, you know, jointly get to a bankable next generation product, right? Because they want that, we want that, everyone benefits.
The way that happens is that, you know, if you have a hundred megawatt project, you might take 1 to 5 megawatts of that and say, I'm going to take a flyer on a new technology that's not fully proven but has the potential to dramatically improve my economics for the full project later and for other projects in the future, right? It's like, okay, why not take a, you know, 1 to 5% bet. Worst case it like underperforms, right? Worst, worst case it catches fire. Of course we don't do that. We certify, right? Setting that aside, right, like worst cases like it just kind of underperforms and worst case there then you just replace the panels with silicon. And so it's, it's really not that big a risk frankly for, for them, but for the industry, for perovskite manufacturers, it's an opportunity to prove out the product in a real operational environment. That's very demanding, right, because these guys like they're getting paid for kilowatt hours that they deliver. So if you don't deliver the power, the energy, right, like you're not, you don't get paid. So ultimately like that's kind of like a place where it's a great proven ground and like a great partnership I think we can have with customers who are now kind of pulling that product from us. But there's other markets, of course, where you know, we announced a partnership with DoD for example, where they're willing to take bets on us made high performance products that may not be proven for 25 years because they don't need 25 year lifetime. Same with space. So, so those are kind of like more niche sort of markets that at least for now until Elon builds, you know, Oracle data centers at gigawatt scale more niche. Those are areas where there's a clear value add from having perovskites.
So we're happy to work with customers on that front as well.
Matt Ferrell: What kind of advice would you give other entrepreneurs and startups? It doesn't have to be in the solar industry. What kind of advice would you give to somebody that's trying to spin up a new idea, spin up a new company?
Joel Jean: Oh man, don't do it. If you knew how hard it would be, maybe you wouldn't do it. But I don't think that's the right advice or the right answer. I don't think I would tell myself that if I were to talk to myself 10 years earlier. Honestly, advice is so hard to give. It's so hard to give useful advice because every situation is different. Um, I think maybe the best thing I've learned is sort of a, it's great to listen to as much advice as you can and then like make your own decision based on all that. Right. The most experienced entrepreneur in the world might have the wrong answer for you and that's, that's reality. So I don't know that I can give like kind of broad, a, a lot of like broad, super valuable advice.
Matt Ferrell: Um, maybe watch out for tooth fairies.
Joel Jean: Yeah, watch out for tooth fairies. Um, and I think it's also like, just like you can change the future. It's like kind of, I don't know, you know, for better, for worse. I think it's like recognizing that how you see the future and how clearly you can paint a picture of what the future looks like can change the underlying probability distribution of whether that future happens.
Matt Ferrell: That's really good advice.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: You said you didn't have good advice. That's good advice.
Sean Ferrell: You said you didn't have good advice, but that would make one hell of a T shirt. So Matt and I just need to say thank you for your time at this point and thank you for your patience with the difficulties I was swimming through as we were having this conversation. But it was really great to meet you and I'm hopeful that if we have some follow up questions that would be really on point for you, that we might be able to reach out to you and have a follow up conversation at some point in the future and check in and see how you're doing. So thank you.
Joel Jean: Of course. Yeah. Thank you guys for your thoughtful questions and nerding out with me.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
The Super Soaker Mailbag
Sean Ferrell: Once again, our thanks to Joel for joining us. And to all of you viewers and listeners out there, what did you think of that conversation? Is there anything you wish we had asked? Is there anything about what Joel said that made you scratch your head or made you, I don't know, pump a fist in the air? I don't know how energetic you are. It's very hot. Maybe you're just lethargically lying down on the floor. If that's the case, I hope you're feeling okay. So on now to our mailbag, where I went through some of the comments in Matt's most recent or one of his most recent. They're coming fast and furious lately. I don't know that I can keep up, but there was an episode that Matt had in which he discussed the conversation we had originally had here with Lonnie Johnson, the inventor of the Super Soaker and some of the projects he's been working on more recently. As he is an, I mean, an incredible person. It just like he's kind of a super brain and he's out there and he's like. He's like, what if this was a squirt gun? Well, what if this was in space and he's doing all these things I usually pull. You know, at the end of this segment, we usually share the best worst comment. I'm not doing a best worst comment today because I basically just wanted to highlight all the love for Lonnie Johnson. There was this from Michael Burke who said, Lonnie Johnson is brilliant. The Super Soaker may have the name recognition, but he invented thin film barriers used in every lithium ion battery you've ever used. He made nuclear power safer. He created radar absorption tiles for stealth aircraft. And he's still the sort of person you could chat over coffee with. I love this guy. And there was this from Jedi nx. Yeah, this guy can't help but think of awesome shit all day. Lol. 2 comments that basically say the same thing.
But finally there was this Arabian shark says at the 4 minute, 4 second mark, I was watching robots on TV and nobody told me they had people inside. So he built one for real. I instantly love this man. That was my sentiment as well.
Matt Ferrell: I know.
Sean Ferrell: At the same moment, didn't know it was a guy in a costume. So he just built a robot. Lonnie. Oh, that Lonnie. That's the sitcom we should pitch Matt.
Matt Ferrell: Finally, freeze frame of him going, so I built a robot. And the credits roll.
Sean Ferrell: Finally, Matt. There was this comment that got me thinking about the topic as a jumping off point. Drake says Something you very briefly mentioned, but which I think deserves a larger spotlight with this technology, is that it could be used for refrigeration. If that's true and it's effective enough, it could reduce our reliance on refrigerants, which are typically either dangerous or awful for the environment. A heat pump without a compressor is groundbreaking. I wanted to use that as a jumping off point. Matt, where do you think the most surprising uses for this might be? In your research and your prep for the conversation with Lonnie, was there anything you saw about the potential for some of this to land in places where we might not expect, or are they the kinds of things that they might land right where we are with refrigerators, air conditioning units, things that we have in our home?
Matt Ferrell: My understanding, we shouldn't expect this in our fridge, in our air conditioner. That small scale, this is something from my understanding is going to be more commercial scale, industrial scale. But that said, the whole idea that this can do, refrigerants can refrigerate something, think about that. For everybody's favorite topic, AI and data centers. This is just an example of like, here's a thing that pumps out heat from all the computers. So you take that waste heat, you pump it in the JTEC and then you could create the cooling system that cools the data center. Kind of crazy. It's like you could run it that way. You could run it in different ways in different industries. And I'm just using data centers as an example, but you could fill in any industry that you can think of that has waste heat that also needs cooling ability. And here's the JTEC. So in those situations, that's where for me the most surprising thing is. It's that because when I we started looking into this, I wasn't aware that it went both ways. So I was just thinking that this was just taking heat and turning into electricity. And it's like, oh no, no, you can take electricity and you could cool things down. You could use the waste heat to generate electricity that you could then use to power a device that then cools things off. It's kind of bonkers of kind of like the Rube Goldberg machine that you could create and place the JTEC technology to kind of supplement existing things. That, to me, is the coolest part about it.
Sean Ferrell: That's pretty amazing. So, viewers and listeners, what do you think? Jump into the comments and let us know. As always, commenting, liking subscribing, sharing with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support the podcast. If you're interested in supporting us more directly, you can go to StillTBD.fm, click the join button there. Or you can click the join button right here on YouTube. Either way allows you to throw coins at our heads. We appreciate the welts. And then we get down to the heavy, heavy business of wondering why people deny that global warming is real. Thank you so much everybody, for taking the time to watch or listen, and we'll talk to you next time.
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