Swift Solar secures financing to expand its perovskite R&D

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Solar PV technology company Swift Solar said it secured more than $8 million in Series Seed 2 funding, with an additional $1.5 million expected to close soon. Altogether, the company has raised more than $16 million in equity financing to date.

The financing round was led by GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij and cryptocurrency player James Fickel. Proceeds will be used to expand R&D, develop prototypes and add staff.

The company is also supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Office of Naval Research.

Swift Solar, founded in 2017, is working to develop metal halide perovskites that it said could “fundamentally outperform” today’s silicon and thin-film technologies. Within 10 years, perovskite tandems could be more efficient, affordable and scalable than other PV products on the market.

Several other companies are targeting single-junction perovskite panels and perovskite-silicon tandems, but Swift Solar is the only one developing all-perovskite tandems, pv-magazine reported earlier this year.

The firm was recently recognized for its work by a joint R&D 100 Award with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Swift Solar said that perovskite solar cells require less material than conventional technologies, and the raw materials are both more abundant and less costly. Manufacturing perovskite PV modules involves simpler and higher-throughput manufacturing equipment and less energy than is needed for silicon PV manufacturing. Flexible perovskite solar panels can be rolled up like a tarp and laminated onto many surfaces. They also enable multijunction, or tandem, cell structures that could boost power conversion efficiencies.

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