I’ve spoken with the senior management of Skyline Solar a number of times and have yet been able to learn the details of what they’re doing.  We covered their funding non-announcement here.

I had heard good things about Skyline Solar during their funding campaign.  According to investors, the firm was knowledgeable, pragmatic and priced at a reasonable valuation. 

Skyline CEO and founder, Bob MacDonald (formerly employee number three at SolFocus), presented at the Silicon Valley Photovoltaics Society on Wednesday night and gave essentially the same not-too-revealing presentation he gave at the Photon event in December, well covered by Ed Gunther here.

They’re in stealth -- OK, I understand.  But you can’t have it both ways -- if you’re in stealth, why are you presenting to a technical audience?  You need to provide some more information than the main thesis of their talk which boiled down to:

We need to deploy a lot of solar quickly and inexpensively.  And by the way -- we're hiring.

And anytime your presentation is called “Meeting the Terawatt Challenge,� you know you’re in an information-free zone.

Bob spoke and let us know that:

• The principal materials in their system are aluminum and silicon.
• Their modules are 10 times the size of conventional solar panels.
• They use concentration of an unspecified magnitude and single-axis tracking.
• They are “accelerating the path to grid parityâ€?
• They’re going for medium sized installations -- from “large commercial to utilityâ€? size.
• They expect a 10 times reduction in the number of parts per installed MW.
• Their system requires about 5 acres per MW.
• Their pre-assembled reflective frame enables rapid installation.

So, it’s a silicon-based medium concentration PV system, say 10 times, with a simple tracking system that uses reflective aluminum instead of silvered glass.  Customized silicon cells are employed to cope with the increased current density.

Skyline seems to have thought out the challenges of cost and scalability in solar -- let’s hope they provide some more information about their product in the coming months.

An esteemed colleague and energy expert, Mr. Edward Beardsworth of Energy Technology Advisors and The Hub Lab, thinks the firm is doing good things.  But Ed also believes in the constructive application of zero point energy, cold fusion and EEStor.