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Australian dye solar cell firm wraps up IPO

With four deals for large-scale manufacturing of TiO₂-based PV building cladding in Europe going sour, Australia's Sustainable Technologies International shifts operations back home to carry out a successful IPO for a new entity, Dyesol. But instead of producing BIPV modules, the newly publicly listed firm wants to make and sell the equipment for others to play the do-or-dye game – and a Canadian firm is first in line.

	© Dyesol Ltd.
Screen test: Dyesol's equipment manager, Ben Jausnik, inspecting the screen printing equipment that applies the nanoparticulate titania PV layer onto the TCO-coated glass substrate.

When Australia's Sustainable Technologies International (STI) – the first company to attempt commercialization of Michael Grätzel's dye solar cell (DSC) technology – bought into Switzerland's Greatcell Solar SA two years ago, the plan was to set up manufacturing plants to produce up to 10,000 m² of TiO₂-based building cladding per year in Europe (see PI 5/2003, p. 10). A year later, Greatcell was even talking about an annual production of 40,000 m² of the glass-glass DSC modules and doubling that by the end of 2006 (see PI 5/2004, p. 9). This was a good turn of events for Greatcell director Gavin Tulloch, who, along with his wife Sylvia back at STI where demonstration modules were being produced, had been trying to get his dream of commercializing DSC production off the ground for more than four years (see PI 6/2001, p.22). The future finally looked rosy – or at least magenta, the main color of the panels – as interest from venture capitalists started to roll in for European factories.

Unfortunately the capital didn't. A total of four dye deals died – one each in Belgium and Austria, and two in Switzerland. Tulloch says a pair of the arrangements went sour due to what he describes as the dubious ethics of the venture capitalists, who seemed bent on scamming him out of his money. One investor pulled out completely, and an Austrian, who had been promising $7 million USD, dropped his offer to $3 million USD at the last minute. »This guy was living in cloud cuckoo land,« says Tulloch.

Getting connected: The interconnect machine applies the polymer and interconnect formulation onto the counter electrode.

Having had enough of such craziness, Tulloch decided to move back, if not to the sanity, at least to the familiar surroundings of home where STI had its pilot DSC production line in Queanbeyan, New South Wales – and where maybe the Tullochs had a better chance of finding capital. So on July 4, they started an initial public offering (IPO) for a new entity, Dyesol Ltd., which shared the same address as STI, offering investors »a clean skin,« as Tulloch puts it, for the technology. A total of 17.5 million shares were offered to raise up to $3.5 million AUD ($2.7 million USD), with a minimum subscription of $2.5 million AUD ($1.9 million USD). By Aug. 15, the closing date, Dyesol had taken in $2.54 million AUD ($1.92 million USD), just above the minimum, and on Aug. 26, the company was notified it would be publicly listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) as of Aug. 31.

A page from Spire's playbook

The goal, however, was no longer the one-time ambition of manufacturing product but rather – taking a page from the playbook of US-based turnkey PV module equipment line maker Spire Solar – sales of everything necessary for others to do the production of DSC. Under this new plan, the Tullochs would keep their Swiss connection with Greatcell, necessary for maintaining a licensing relationship for the pure research being done at Grätzel's Laboratory for Photonics and Interfaces (LPI) in the Lausanne-based Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) on TiO₂, feed that into STI as applied research, which would then be used by Dyesol to make the dye paste – with a formula as well protected as Coca-Cola's secret recipe. As part of the design and delivery of full manufacturing facilities, Dyesol would also provide its specialized DSC production photoelectrochemical equipment and tooling for cell manufacture, sealing, and tabbing and stringing – it has six patents and another 14 pending – as well as help clients choose off-the-shelf equipment for such needs as screen printing, baking, and encapsulation.

© Dyesol Ltd.

Secret ingredient: Based on research by Michael Grätzel, Dyesol formulates and blends the nanoparticulate paste, which differs from typical thick-film pastes in that it fires to produce a porous layer approximately 10 µm thick.

But although a prospectus published in late June describes an 18-month period for clients to ramp up to a capacity of 50,000 m², Dyesol's initial targets are actually much more modest. Tulloch, wanting to make sure customers first »learn to walk before they run,« is pushing an initial capacity of just 5,000 m². A major reason for this is that current equipment is based on batch production – a device for continuous production has been patented but will need another year to 18 months to reach the commercial stage. But even a 50,000 m² DSC cladding capacity factory would only be equal to a 3.5 MW facility in 2008, admits Tulloch. This is based on the current best module efficiency for the 18×10 cm tiles of 5.5 percent, according to STI measurements, stabilizing at about 4 percent after several months, with a goal of scaling up 1 percentage point annually over the next three years.

© Dyesol Ltd.

Getting the treatment: Following application of the dye, the working electrode is treated with a surface chemical prior to assembly of the module.

Still, those numbers could change. In March, Grätzel published an article in the American Institute of Physics' Applied Physics Letters on a new dye, coded as K-19. His LPI team at EPFL claims it has produced a cell using this dye that has reached an efficiency of 8 percent or greater, retaining over 98 percent of its initial performance after 1,000 hours of accelerated tests subjected to thermal stress at 80 °C in the dark, and a negligible degradation following 1,000 hours of visible light soaking at 60 °C.

Canadian start up gives an online thumbs up

But for now, Dyesol is playing it safe, promoting the BIPV modules more as an alternative for architects and builders in which »the power is free,« says Tulloch. And the first company vying for that »free power« is Ontario, Canada-based start-up Helios Technologies, which purchased a six-month feasibility study offered by Dyesol in March. While a decision by Helios of whether to go with Dyesol, and therefore have exclusive production and distribution rights in Canada, is not supposed to be made until September, the Helios' website is already promoting plans to set up a production factory in the York region of Ontario. (According to the prospectus, Helios would pay Dyesol undefined royalties on manufactured product sold.) But Martin Rodriguez, Helios vice president of marketing and sales, declined to comment since the deal had yet to be finalized. Tulloch would also not give details about Helios or other interested manufacturers, saying only that Dyesol has had about 10 inquiries from companies based in the US, southern and eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Sylvia Tulloch, Dyesol's managing director, says a second company will probably go for a feasibility study in September, but that Dyesol only wants to take on clients every two to three months at this point due to its limited size.

What clients would end up with are products similar to the 500 m² of Titania Solar Wall panels STI has produced so far, 200 m² of which is installed on a facade at the Newcastle, Australia-based CSIRO Energy Centre, and a smaller amount on a home at the Houses of the Future display at the Sydney Olympic Park. Every 60×90 cm panel, nearly 40 percent of which is non-active area for architectural and structural reasons, includes 24 DSC tiles, each made of six cells. The tiles are connected in series or parallel to produce 12 or 24 V.

© Dyesol Ltd.

Modern living: So far relegated to demonstration projects, 10 m² of DSC facade panels have been integrated to form a magenta »stripe« across the undulating wall-floor-roof of one of the Houses of the Future on display at the Sydney Olympic Park.

While the end product is known, at this point certification is not since there are no current standards for DSC products. Sylvia Tulloch says for now, Dyesol will have to be guided by standards for silicon, an unfair situation since DSC »can't use or meet them« as they are based on flash tests of 0.001 seconds, not the minimum of 0.01 seconds required for DSC. Instead, the Tullochs are planning to start drawing up new standards for international test organizations to consider. First discussions will take place at a DSC conference they have scheduled for February in Canberra, Australia.

As to the Tullochs' revised plans, it remains to be seen if Dyesol is the vehicle to pull off this new strategy. Certainly, it will require lower capitalization than doing the manufacturing themselves. Gavin Tulloch estimates there are several hundred organizations worldwide interested in DSC, providing Dyesol with »a bank of potential clients« for its manufacturing equipment and materials. If Dyesol is successful, DSC will have made a long stride toward getting its first tiny slice of the PV pie. If not, it would be a major defeat also for DSC technology, which has been advertised as the next big thing in PV for quite some time. The die for a dye-solar-cell future has been cast.