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Japanese solar perovskite developer EneCoat Technologies has raised 5.5 billion yen ($35 million) from new and existing investors to fund further collaborations based on its low-temperature production process.
EneCoat Technologies, a subsidiary of Kyoto University of Photovoltaic Technology, has announced plans to invest in a production facility and develop collaborations with the industrial sector. It will be funded by a 5.5 billion yen venture capital investment that the company has secured from a group of Japanese institutions and venture capital companies.
EneCoat is pursuing a number of applications for its perovskite thin-film technology, which it manufactures using a proprietary low-temperature deposition process, including those requiring high efficiency in low-light conditions, as well as outdoor photovoltaic applications requiring lightweight, flexible solar panels.
Its modules were 19.4% efficient in March 2023, pv magazine reported in 2023.
The new investors hope that EneCoat products will help increase the number of physical sites where solar energy can be installed. A key part of the strategy is to accelerate “partnerships with leading Japanese companies,” according to Naoya Kato, CEO of EneCoat.
The venture capital funding has been led by Woven Capital, the growth unit of Japanese automotive group Toyota, a company with which EneCoat has partnered on recent vehicle-integrated photovoltaic (VIPV) projects.
“EneCoat is well positioned to drive perovskite cell technology as a market alternative to silicon cells, offering tremendous strategic value to Japan and practical advantages for diverse applications,” said Michiko Kato, Partner at Woven Capital.
Inpex, a Japanese oil and gas exploration company, and Mitsubishi HC Capital, a Japan-based banking and financial services company, are the other two lead investors.
EneCoat aims to make products that “sell at a fraction of the price of traditional silicon cells when produced at scale by using low-cost raw materials such as iodine compounds,” according to a press release. An Inpex release noted that Japan has water-soluble gas fields where brackish groundwater is used to produce iodine after natural gas is extracted.
“We hope our investment will help accelerate EneCoat’s efforts toward mass production as we work with EneCoat to strengthen our supply chain for iodine, a key raw material for perovskite solar cells,” said Hideki Kurimura, CEO and senior vice president of Inpex Corp.
The company, founded in 2018 as a subsidiary of Professor Atsushi Wakamiya’s research group at Kyoto University’s Institute of Chemical Research, is involved in several research projects. It is involved in Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO) program and in a battery project with NGK Insulators, which acquired a stake in the company in 2022. |
