PXP Corporation, a Japanese startup company developing flexible chalcopyrite photovoltaic modules announced it secured JPY 1.5 billion ($9.98 million) through a Series A round of venture capital that was led by Japan’s SoftBank Corp., a publicly-traded telecommunications and media technology company.
Chalcopyrite (CuGaSe2) has an energy bandgap of 1.7 eV and has been used in solar cells with limited fill factor and open-circuit voltage to date.
PXP Corporation has plans to produce flexible chalcopyrite modules and to develop a tandem perovskite-chalcopyrite solar cell technology. The aim is to scale up from a pilot line to a dedicated plant for production, R&D and training. “We are planning the plant with an annual production capacity of around 25 MW,” PXP Corporation's chief technology officer, Hiroki Sugimoto, told pv magazine.
Production is slated to begin with chalcopyrite modules with an 18% efficiency. At a later stage, the company intends to produce chalcopyrite panels with a power conversion efficiency of 19.2%, according to Sugimoto.
PXP is also working on perovskite-chalcopyrite tandem cells, which achieved an efficiency of 26.5% in the lab earlier this year. “Since then efforts are focused on durability improvement,” said Sugimoto.
PXP Corporation has been demonstrating over the past year its lightweight and flexible chalcopyrite modules in a range of vehicle-integrated PV (VIPV) applications, such as solar-powered portable refrigerated containers, a solar-integrated passenger car, and an electric tricycle.
A Softbank spokesperson told pv magazine that the company aims to use the PXP technology in various applications, such as powering data centers with clean energy, supplying power to portable base stations to be deployed in disaster-affected areas during emergencies, and on ultra-lightweight high altitude platform station (HAPS), the solar-powered aircraft meant to operate at an altitude of 20 km above the earth’s surface carrying telecommunications base stations as the payload.
Co-investors in the venture financing round included Solable Corporation, Kowa Optronics, Toyota Tsusho Corporation, J&TC Frontier, a joint investment vehicle between JFE Engineering Corporation and Tokyo Century Corporation, Automobile Fund Co., Mitsubishi HC Capital Co, Yokohama Capital Co., Ltd., and Taro Ventures.
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