Space Age Solar Technology by RayGen, Showcased for Renewables Investors

RayGen is an Australian-based solar technology business. The Company’s mission is to use innovative technological solutions to provide, cheap, clean and renewable energy for people all over the world. RayGen is currently hoping to commercialise space age solar technology. It is also one of ten firms seeking $88million from investors at a Clean Energy Finance Corporation speed-dating event.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Seeking the last $4 million of a $14 million capital raising from private investors to build a solar array as large as 10 megawatts in China by 2019.
• $40b utility scale solar market.

“Once we are cheaper we’ll really be able to disrupt the massive solar PV market,” Mr Lasich said.

The $40 billion the $40 billion Utility scale solar market is expected to triple in size in the next decade as solar energy becomes more competitive and governments focus on meeting their Paris commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Redback Technologies, which makes smart current inverters for household batteries, and green retailer Mojo Power are also seeking funding from the Clean Energy Innovation Fund, a CEFC fund.

Blair Pritchard, who runs the fund, said many solutions to soaring grid power prices and power shortages lie in “behind the meter”, decentralised technologies such as demand management and response, storage and solar generation innovations of the kind on show at the event in Sydney.

He said the industry was at a tipping point with the payback on energy efficiency and solar technolgy down to three or four years and batteries such as Tesla’s Powerwall 2 not far behind – and as much as a dozen years ahead of where energy forecasters expected them to be.

Mr Pritchard said sharp summer peaks in electricity demand make Australia a prime candidate for consumer demand management technologies, and venture capital firms and family offices reckon the time is right to make a plunge into the field.

Australian power consumers pay some of the highest electricity prices in the developed world, with standard tariffs of 25-35¢ per kilowatt hour before discounts.

Mr Pritchard said the amount of good deals coming before the fund was much higher than even just a year ago. In particular there is “massive pent up demand” for better metering solutions and meters that are low cost, data rich and “plug and play” will “go a long way to taking massive pressure off the grid”.

RayGen’s technology uses curved industrial mirrors as cheaply available solar collectors and orients them so as to follow the sun and concentrate its rays on a satellite-quality gallium arsenide generator mounted on a tall post. A single 10-centimetre square generator module can generate 2 1/2 kW of energy – enough to power a small house – and Mr Lasich said the efficiency could be improved by another 20-30 per cent.

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