In this six-part series, Greentech Media's President, Scott Clavenna, sits down with Dr. Richard Swanson, one of the most important figures in the U.S. solar industry, for a conversation about his company, his personal history in renewable energy, how to stay competitive in a crowded field, and the mark he hopes SunPower will make on the global solar energy market.
Part 1: Discovering Solar at Stanford
In this episode we talk about Dr. Swanson's years at Stanford University in the 1970s where he explored solar technology and landed upon the realization that improving conversion efficiency would be key in building a PV solution that could compete effectively with the solar thermal solutions prevailing in the market. The breakthrough Dr. Swanson oversaw at Stanford would soon underpin the business plan for SunPower, a solar startup designed around delivering a concentrating PV solution for utility-scale power generation.
Part 2: Catching the Entrepreneurial Bug
In this episode, Dr. Swanson makes the move from Stanford to a startup. His developments at Stanford, centered mainly around concentration technology for utility-scale solar photovoltaics. Their competition at the time was the large-scale solar thermal solutions being deployed in the desert, but the market's shifts and turns would ultimately lead SunPower away from concentrating PV to today's high-efficiency single-sun PV optimized for distributed generation. Along the way, Dr. Swanson and his team needed patient, far-sighted investors, and a belief that the solar market was here to stay.
Part 3: SunPower Scales Up
In Episode 3, SunPower has grown up, gone from a startup to a unit of Cypress Semiconductor and is now in a position to compete in a global market. Dr. Swanson describes the importance of manufacturing on the scale of mass-produced semiconductors, and talks through the promise and challenges of thin film solar.
Part 4: Facing Today's Challenges
In this episode we bring the conversation up to the present and talk about the solar market today and how SunPower will face the market's challenges in 2008, from polysilicon shortages to thin film startups and shifting demand drivers.
Part 5: Staying Power in a Crowded Market
In this episode Dr. Swanson surveys the solar market today, and talks to SunPower's competitive positioning in an ever more crowded playing field. Touching on the hot-button issues of the day, including the commoditization of solar panels, the entrance of many new competitors from Asia, and an industry trend towards vertical integration, Dr. Swanson lays out his argument for SunPower's continued leadership in the years to come.
Part 6: The 20-year Horizon for PV
In this final segment of our conversation with Dr. Richard Swanson, President and CTO of SunPower, we look out 20 years, to understand where the solar market is heading. Discussing challenges ranging from the impact of fossil fuel pricing and subsidies to the ongoing hurdles of dispatchable storage, reaching grid parity with traditional power sources, and managing the relationship between distributed and centralized generation, Swanson paints a picture of the future in which all solar plays an increasingly important role in the world's energy economy.