The founder of Toronto-based solar start-up Morgan Solar was weeks away from starting mass production of its innovative Sun Simba concentrating PV (CPV) module at a new factory in San Diego, California. Then the price of silicon fell through the floor.
“Coming into that year we saw the collapsing price of PV and the factory — for which we had a loan from the California Energy Commission [CEC] and in which we had invested millions [of dollars] — and it became clear that there was huge risk that we would launch this project and it wouldn’t be able to compete with falling PV prices and we would simply go bust,” says Morgan.
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