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Solar panels are just about everywhere . There ’s a just chance one of your neighbors has them on their roof , as does the big box seat memory board down the street . As you force there , you might see a field of them post up alongside the road . With that sort of ubiquity , you ’d be forgive if you thought there was n’t room for improvement .
Venkatesan Murali would care to prove you amiss .
Murali , founding father and CTO ofMerlin Solar , has been working a new angle on solar for nigh a decade . He founded the company in 2016 , after Solyndra ’s dramatic implosion in 2011 and as Chinese manufacturers were drive panels down a vertiginous cost curve . But Murali remained fixated , though he did take a lesson from the debacle .
“ Do n’t daunt the heck out of multitude with something Modern , ” he told TechCrunch . “ No newfangled atom , no new physics . ”
Instead , Merlin Solar turned to an existent and wide used solar technology — monocrystalline silicon . Solar cells made with the stuff are inexpensive but fragile ; to prevent faulting , companies usually sandwich monocrystalline Si within two panels of glass bordered by a alloy physical body . That make panel heavy , and it restrain where they can be installed .
Murali wanted flexible solar panels , but using monocrystalline atomic number 14 gravel a challenge . “ Everything crystalline will finally snap , ” Murali say . “ Can we ensure every electron will come up its way , even if a hummer move through ? ”
To answer that , the company exchange the way jail cell are join within a panel . Merlin beefed up the number of connectedness front and back and , between cells , made the interconnects springy so they could recoil back after being bent .
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“ All of a sudden , we had a production that was not only resistive to cracking , but electrically resilient to cracking , ” he said .
Merlin ’s panels are significantly light than a typical chicken feed panel , and their compromising nature changes how and where they can be put in . The panels amount with an adhesive on the coterie , so they can be attached to aerofoil just like a child ’s sticker . The bendy structure can follow the contour of different surfaces , take into account them to mount wealthy atop the roof of an Airstream lagger , for example .
Merlin enounce its panels can cope with fond shading better than traditional panels . In a traditional panel , once something like a leaf shade off a box of the cell , power output drops off dramatically . Merlin ’s World Wide Web of connections admit more index to route around the shaded cellular phone .
The added flexibleness , light weight , and ability to do by shading has made Merlin ’s gore a favourite among recreational vehicles owner . The company has also sold panel to companies like Perdue , Daimler , and Ryder for consumption on their trucks , allowing them to reduce idling or the use of fossil fuel to power onboard refrigerator .
Merlin ’s tweaks mean its products be more than typical solar panel , which has forced it to get originative with who it sells to . “ We go into space where we are not competing singularly on cost , ” Murali said . “ When I am minimizing laze of a hand truck , I ’m going up against dingy and expensive vitality produced by incinerate Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel . And so when I go up against that , my return on invested capital is typically within a year and a half . ”
Beyond RV owners and shippers , the society is also eye the rooftop solar business organization , where a significant share of solar instrument panel are install . To descale up , the troupe late raised a $ 31 million Series B run by Fifth Wall with participation from Saint - Gobain and Ayala .
Merlin hopes that Saint - Gobain , one of the largest roofing stuff companies , will become one of the startup ’s largest customers , with its panels finding their fashion into Saint - Gobain ’s solar shingles , Merlin COO Laura Allen state .
