As an expert on silicon and solar, the technology is doomed- here's why:
•It is totally possible, in terms of the physics, to do what they're proposing. All you have to do is take your ingot or boule of FZ or Cz Silicon, draw a vacuum on it, backfill it with hydrogen, and run your ion implantation head over it. Like a Durandal bomb, the upper surface is relatively undisturbed but a cutting effect occurs beneath the surface. Pop, off comes your perfect and thin wafer.
•This idea has been proposed before.
•There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a 3 micron thick silicon wafer. It takes some different processing steps to trap the light, but you can still make a decent solar cell out of it. It's not better than a 400 micron wafer in terms of efficiency, but not much worse. Also, by it being so thin, it's flexible and not so darn brittle. That reduces breakage but also makes handling a little more challenging.
•The idea fails when you consider the economics. First consider the market you're trying to break into- there's a huge glut of silicon wafer manufacturing capacity in the industry. Silicon manufacture is going gang busters, so it's not a commodity that's expensive to begin with. Solyndra bet on silicon prices staying high and that, more than any other reason, is why they failed. This is the same bet with a different topology.
•Bill Nye should perform a little math problem- consider the amount of electricity and hydrogen gas necessary to perform a cleave, 100% efficient, 100% yield, and multiply these quantities by their respective commodity costs. You will end up with a number in excess of the cost of a 500 micron wafer, or perilously close to one.
•I did the math five years ago and it made no sense then, when silicon wafers sold for over twice as much. Just because the existing technology is materially wasteful (it definitely is, generating a lot of kerf and going through a lot of expensive wiresaw blades and polishing processes) doesn't mean that it's economically wasteful.
It's not too late to pivot- I'm sure he'll have no difficulty raising the money in spite of these shortcomings. I'd be more than happy to steer this company in the right direction, contributing IP that actually delivers on these promises. All it takes is an e-mail.
I agree that this is going to be a commercial failure even if funded. Additional stray observations:
- The "magic," if anything, is supposed to be that super-thin kerfless wafers could justify the industrial scale use of float zone silicon. FZ has often been the material of choice for lab scale fabrication of champion devices. Unlike ordinary boron doped p-type Cz silicon, it doesn't have dissolved oxygen traces from crucible walls, so it doesn't suffer B-O complex light induced degradation.
- High efficiency is still worth a premium, even if low-mid range quality cells are stuck in a brutal commoditized competition. (But high efficiency is not worth a large premium, hence the problems of even well-established high efficiency manufacturers like SunPower and Panasonic.)
- Super thin wafers are less sensitive to bulk recombination. Though this theoretical advantage is unneeded if you're starting with superpure FZ silicon in the first place.
- FZ silicon is only available in smaller diameters, so the cells wouldn't be drop-in replacements in the usual 60/72 cell module that starts with 156 mm cells.
- Silicon's resistance to damage by cosmic rays goes up dramatically as the cell thickness drops down to the few-tens-of-microns range. But that's not relevant for terrestrial use and compound semiconductors are still more efficient and more damage-resistant for space use.
Other companies that proposed to do kerfless wafering with ion implantation and failed to reach commercial success:
Twin Creeks Technologies
GT Advanced Technologies (later owners of Twin Creeks assets)
SiGen
1366 Technologies appears to have the closest-to-industrial kerfless process at present, though it's not as dramatic as as some kerfless technology concepts. I hope that their partnership with Hanwha Q Cells goes to full scale production before the money runs out.
1366 Technologies's full-scale plant in Western New York has yet to break ground. The state finally broke ground two days ago on some minor infrastructure work for the site, but 1366 might be held up by financing issues due to worries that Trump won't follow through on a DOE $150M loan guarantee.
I think their interest is clear enough, and not long term...
“After each closing, funds tendered by investors will be available to the company and, after the company has sold $7,000,000 worth of Common Stock, selling securityholders will be permitted to sell up to $3,000,000 worth of Common Stock.
> Just because the existing technology is materially wasteful (it definitely is, generating a lot of kerf and going through a lot of expensive wiresaw blades and polishing processes) doesn't mean that it's economically wasteful.
Always wondered- why not EDM? Too slow? Hydrogen injection? Tungsten/copper contamination?
* Silicon is not a rare material. It's one of the more common elements in Earth's crust. The price is largely in processing and fabrication, meaning it's going to continue to fall like a rock due to economies of scale and optimization.
Energy prices have fallen continually through human history. As our demand for energy increases we find better and better ways of harnessing available energy. This wafer technology itself could lead to reducing energy costs to a point where silicon refinement becomes economical for the production of further wafers.
The availability of Silicon is not a limitation energy prices are.
The stock market in general is moving in a strange direction in the past decade.
•First the dividends became the thing of the past as the companies argued that stock buybacks are more tax-efficient. The general public accepted it.
•Then the earnings per share disappeared and loss per share became standard. The argumentation was that it's better to invest in growth today and figure out profitability "some other day". The public ate it with not much questioning.
•Then it was the voting rights' turn to go with IPOs like SNAP. It raised some concerns (like being excluded from the S&P 500), but didn't stop people from investing either.
So if the general public keeps on bringing the money in despite the worsening conditions, it makes sense that someone would come up with even a bolder plan for turning this condition into their personal profit.
I blame the agency problem [1]. Too many investment decisions these days are made by someone investing someone else's money and their interests could be different from simply maximizing the returns and too many people blindly trust their money to be managed by someone else without fully understanding the underlying processes.
I don't think you're completely correct about EPS in the broader market, (but correct in the headline names). The rest I agree with completely. What's surprising to me is that there wasn't some sort of retrenchment after the 2007-8 crisis.
I agree with your analysis about the agency problem, but I also see the it as too much money chasing too few assets. Ever desperate for return, money managers will chase anything that has a return, whether it's rational or not.
We are still too early in the bubble cycle. The returns are higher every year but they are linear. Wait until the public comes (free money?) and discover this; and then you get a parabolic market run and a subsequent crash.
1. You seem to be implying that there's something wrong with share buybacks but aren't explicitly stating it. I'd be curious to know what your criticism of share buy backs is?
2. Anecdotally, I still think EPS is by far the more widely used metric. EPS numbers can be negative so there's not much use for loss per share numbers, and most public companies have positive earnings.
3. This I agree with, SNAP's lack of voting rights is really concerning and initially SNAP didn't seem to traded at a discount because of that. It's worth noting it's down over 40% from the price it traded on the day it went public, although potentially for other reasons.
I also generally agree that people would be far better off if they educated themselves a little better on what they have their money invested in.
The issue with share buybacks is they are designed to increase the share price rather than provide a cash return to existing investors. To a common stockholder, the two outcomes are basically the same (minus maybe some tax differences). But to a common optionholder, they are vastly different. Optionholders typically can't benefit from dividends, whereas they do benefit from the share price increasing.
This matters because management is often paid in options. So, managements have an incentive to allocate capital to share buybacks to boost their pay packages instead of reinvesting money in the business. If share buybacks were illegal and the only two options were dividends and keeping the capital in the business, managements might behave very differently.
I don't think it's agency; I think it's the fact that non-equity based investments have had terrible returns for a decade now. What are you going to do? Invest in a CD?
That's fascinating, in a sense shares become closer to ICO tokens (no obligations, no control and no dividends).
I believe we can also blame regulators for that. Most banks have extremely low rates nowadays, which is (AFAIK) deliberate to incentivize investment in the stock market. So there is a power imbalance between investors (who have no other choices) and investees, which manifests as rules shifting in favor of investees.
Regarding Bill Nye, this makes me sad. He really was instrumental in making science fun and exciting when I was young. In his post TV life he's become just another political idealogue. Even doing as far as censuring[1] his own TV show when the science contradicts his social justice message.
Now it seems he's coming to normal people with an ax to grind. It's hard to see him not profiting from this endeavor.
That’s a weak-ass article you’ve cited there which does little more than make some vague accusations with little evidence.
Frankly this looks more like a typical case of a celebrity endorsement without enough research - which is bad, but I’d argue far less serious than the accusations you’re making.
That is not what ad-hominem means. When you are evaluating the reliability of a source, it is perfectly legitimate to look at what that source has produced in the past and see if it holds up.
I don't see a problem with that. Genetic sex is pretty cut and dry, no one seriously debates that. What is under review is the expression of that underlying genetic determination. He's simply changing his stand with the evidence, we have millions of people around the world with various gender dysphorias that in some societies are simply accepted as fact. You may disagree that gender identity is complex, but that doesn't mean you're right. I'm a straight white male and I've never had any doubt about my identity in that respect, but that doesn't mean that my friends who are transgender don't have a different experience.
It's a bad scientist who stands by a theory that is incomplete.
There is a spectrum of gender, it's just that 99.99%+ of the population fits into male or female, that doesn't mean that the other combinations don't exist however. And of course there are more combinations than XY and XX, that's been known since like the 1950s! They're rare, but not absent. Transgender is more complicated, but there are initial signs (difference in diffusibility of brain matter in mri scans and effect of fetal testosterone levels) that there are biological reasons involved there as well. In the animal world, there are freemartins that are similar.
My mind was changed on this. I used to believe it was simple, you're XX or you're XY. Even two people with the same genes could be quite different if those genes are expressed differently.
He also provided a platform to legitimize creationism by debating it as if it is a valid explanation of how the world came to be. I understand the desire to promote debate but I think he fell into the false balance trap.
He did a great deal to advance STEM in the millennial generation which should not be understated but nobody is faultless. He is a great educator but I question if he really knows how best to use his platform.
Bill came right out and stated he understood that argument, but instead preferred to take that opportunity to talk directly to the audience. He didn't take Ken Hamm seriously, and didn't really promote debate. Instead he spent most of the time trying to talk to the impressionable members of the viewing audience, using his chance to talk to them in a rare unfiltered moment. He saw a chance to exploit their desire for a legitimizing debate to instead undermine their hold on younger people in the audience.
You're just as far in the opposite direction, though.
When people have strange beliefs, the best way to deal with the situation is usually to talk to them on the same level, as grownups with valid beliefs. Otherwise you change no one's mind.
If we dig through your brain, we'd probably turn up a few questionable beliefs of your own. Most people just aren't that transparent.
Ardent creationists are not just people with strange beliefs. They are people who have built their lives around promoting and defending harmfully bad ideas.
If you have evidence that debating them helps, I look forward to seeing it. But from what I've seen, a credible person sharing a stage with a loon elevates the loon. Treating nonsense as sense devalues sense.
I'm not saying we should refuse to debate in all cases. There are not always exactly two sides and just because someone comes up with a crazy idea does not mean we should spend energy arguing with them.
Yes, talking and educating people is an important endeavor and one that Bill Nye has proven to be well suited. However, education and debate are not the same thing and it is easy to legitimize dangerous ideas by putting them on an equal footing with proven concepts in the context of a debate.
I have all kinda of crazy beliefs, many that I probably can't even identify myself. That doesn't mean I should waste an expert's time with debate.
a) The debate is happening whether Bill Nye takes part or not.
b) If proponents of proposition A are unwilling to debate proponents of proposition B then proponents of A will be look like they don't believe in their proposition. You need to be willing to defend your beliefs.
c) Debating someone does not legitimize their proposition. I believe you are legitimizing their proposition if you refuse to debate them.
I agree you will almost never debate your opponent into a different point of view but you can change the beliefs of the audience sometimes.
For instance I don't mind if you change your opinion on the merit of debating creationists but I'm hoping to sway anyone else that reads this to my point of view.
Yeah, at some point I no longer have time or energy for that. I wish you luck, though!
You may be able to change some audience views but you're more dedicated than I. I've tried reason. I am a scientist. I have explained scientific method and had so many bizarre responses that I guess I've just learned to not engage when people demonstrate willful ignorance.
Honestly, it's not even always from the people you expect. Not that long ago, someone was telling me that sea levels were going to rise by 54' by 2050 and that it was 'a proven science fact.' I gave them a whole bunch of data and citations but I'm a mathematician and not a climate scientist - thus they decided I was an uninformed liar and declared themselves the victor.
I was pretty baffled by that one, actually. I'm really certain that AGW is a serious problem. I'm also really certain the sea isn't going to rise that much by 2050. I know, because I read the research and understand it well enough.
I don't know... Maybe I'm jaded and disillusioned.
You're falling in to the same trap I think Bill Nye fell into. There are not always precisely two equally valid opinions. Forcing debate to fit the assumption that exactly two perspectives are equally valid perpetuates the creation of baseless theories for the purpose of debate itself. See: cable news.
They've been advertising heavily on Facebook. Companies like Alta Devices and 1366 Technologies have been making kerfless photovoltaics for almost ten years now and are up to gen4 and gen3 production lines respectively, and have been selling in quantity to actual customers.
Meanwhile, Rayton has made a down payment on a "microwave ion source" beam accelerator from Pheonix Nuclear Labs and has apparently yet to come up with the remainder of the funds to take delivery, so they are still at gen0 (proof-of-concept.)
I'm not qualified to comment on the financial accusations but if accurate they seem quite damning. However I'm not sure I like the way the author of this piece cites usernames from the _comments of the same article_ as experts in the field of solar technology.
Very sad to see professors at UCLA acting as directors for this, if its a scam. I'm hoping they're just ignorant of the economics and not committing willful fraud.
Hopeless, ridiculous scam from top to bottom! Silicon isn't even a big factor in price of solar cells. It is dirt cheap nowadays, there is less than 1 cent worth of silicon in 1 watt of solar cell (which is worth 22-24 cents nowadays). And that is a small fraction of cost of watt of installed system ($1-$6 depending on type, size, country, and who you ask). That means, for solar industry, that is at best fraction of percent level of improvement.
Shameless scam for people who must be so stupid they deserve being scammed.
Here are some important facts from the SEC filing:
If the company cannot raise sufficient funds it will not succeed or will require significant additional capital infusions.
Rayton Solar is offering Common Stock in the amount of up to $50 million in this offering, but may sell much less. After $7 million is raised, the following $3 million will go to the selling securityholders. Even if the maximum amount is raised, the company is likely to need additional funds in the future in order to grow, and if it cannot raise those funds for whatever reason, including reasons outside the company’s control, such as another significant downturn in the economy, it may not survive. If the company does not sell all of the Common Stock it is offering, it will have to find other sources of funding in order to develop its business.
Even if Rayton Solar is successful in selling all of the Common Stock being offered, Rayton Solar’s proposed business will require significant additional capital infusions. Based on its current estimates, Rayton Solar will require at least $35 million to create a 54 megawatt, commonly abbreviated as MW, PV module manufacturing facility. This amount does not include the amount needed to manufacture the PV modules for sale. If planned operating levels are changed, higher operating costs encountered, lower sales revenue received or more time is needed to implement the business plan, more funds than currently anticipated may be required. Furthermore, in order to expand, the company is likely to raise funds again in the future, either by offerings of securities or through borrowing from banks or other sources. The terms of future capital infusions may include covenants that give creditors rights over the financial resources of the company or sales of equity securities that will dilute the holders of the company’s Common Stock.
The company has not yet generated any revenues.
Rayton Solar has no revenues generated since its inception. There is no assurance that the company will ever be profitable or generate sufficient revenue to pay dividends to the holders of its Common Stock. The company does not believe it will be able to generate revenues without successfully achieving target market sales for the PV module to large scale project developers, large scale retailers and wholesalers, or contractors. If the company cannot raise enough funds in this financing to manufacture and sell PV modules, it will need to successfully sell its solar cells to PV module manufacturers, which will result in less revenue to the company. If that fails, then it will need to license its current and future patents, assuming the company is granted its patents that are currently pending. Rayton Solar is dependent upon the proceeds of this offering for working capital, including for the manufacture of the PV modules.
The company is an early stage company.
As an early stage company and a company developing a new technology, Rayton Solar may encounter difficulties such as unanticipated problems relating to the development and testing of its product, initial and continuing regulatory compliance, vendor manufacturing costs, production and assembly of its product, and the competitive and regulatory environments in which the company intends to operate. It is uncertain, at this stage of its development, if the company will be able to effectively resolve any such problems, should they occur. If the company cannot resolve an unanticipated problem, it may be forced to modify or abandon its business plan.
Operations could be adversely affected by interruptions of production that are beyond the company’s control.
The company plans to manufacture its own PV modules. However, if it does not raise enough money, it will sell solar cells needed to produce the PV modules, or license the technology instead. Even if it sells solar cells, the company will rely on vendors to provide silicon ingots and other material. If there are interruptions in the ability of a vendor to provide the necessary amounts of silicon ingots, the company will not be able to meet its production.
isn't the point then, Rayton is a cry for help from Bill Nye? as in, he wants the world's best experts on silicon and solar to come together and work 24/7 on this problem.
Its just a liberal contract, and you just have to hope they won't do it the way this article flags.
Most crowd sales have unlimited discretionary use of the funds, and that doesn't mean you can't make a profit, especially if you receive something tradable back.
This is probably another reason why equity companies (or at least, purchases of their private equity) are going to go the way of the dinosaur, without liberalizing a liquid secondary market, now that there are alternatives available.
Existing securities laws didn't develop in a vacuum - they were a response to real problems in capital markets. Receiving something tradeable presupposes a counter party to trade with. Those likely will be in short supply once you've bought a lemon.
A secondary market which eschews many of the practices of the established markets vis a vis investor protections, and relies on information discovery and reputation, eventually will develop so much friction related to those costs as to stop being viable.
> Existing securities laws didn't develop in a vacuum - they were a response to real problems in capital markets
They were still developed in a vacuum. US securities laws are 90% promulgated by the SEC unilaterally, for quite some time, and even when Congress is involved the SEC still spends years warping the intent and implementation of the law. The SEC's public comment periods are a total farce and their decision is unilateral, doesn't provide more confidence in the markets, hampers interstate commerce, usually increases transaction costs and the cost of capital, and doesn't prevent scams.
This year the source is the collective conscious that sees and uses the alternative ways of raising or transmitting capital, who can tolerate the lack of consumer and investor protections because of the immediate liquidity benefits allowing them to manage risk
There is no dissertation on it, at best you'll find some charts showing side by side comparisons of what you get with the antiquated share company - a technology from 1600 AD - with what is available now, and you couple that with the size of the deal flow and extrapolate what can happen next
> the immediate liquidity benefits allowing them to manage risk
Sure, everyone loves liquidity and anyone can manage risk in an orderly two-sided market.
If there is 1) no legitimate profit-making endeavor backing your security & 2) no current bid, your security is worth exactly $0. You have faith that we needn't worry about (1) because (2) will never happen. I don't.
•It is totally possible, in terms of the physics, to do what they're proposing. All you have to do is take your ingot or boule of FZ or Cz Silicon, draw a vacuum on it, backfill it with hydrogen, and run your ion implantation head over it. Like a Durandal bomb, the upper surface is relatively undisturbed but a cutting effect occurs beneath the surface. Pop, off comes your perfect and thin wafer.
•This idea has been proposed before.
•There's nothing fundamentally wrong with a 3 micron thick silicon wafer. It takes some different processing steps to trap the light, but you can still make a decent solar cell out of it. It's not better than a 400 micron wafer in terms of efficiency, but not much worse. Also, by it being so thin, it's flexible and not so darn brittle. That reduces breakage but also makes handling a little more challenging.
•The idea fails when you consider the economics. First consider the market you're trying to break into- there's a huge glut of silicon wafer manufacturing capacity in the industry. Silicon manufacture is going gang busters, so it's not a commodity that's expensive to begin with. Solyndra bet on silicon prices staying high and that, more than any other reason, is why they failed. This is the same bet with a different topology.
•Bill Nye should perform a little math problem- consider the amount of electricity and hydrogen gas necessary to perform a cleave, 100% efficient, 100% yield, and multiply these quantities by their respective commodity costs. You will end up with a number in excess of the cost of a 500 micron wafer, or perilously close to one.
•I did the math five years ago and it made no sense then, when silicon wafers sold for over twice as much. Just because the existing technology is materially wasteful (it definitely is, generating a lot of kerf and going through a lot of expensive wiresaw blades and polishing processes) doesn't mean that it's economically wasteful.
It's not too late to pivot- I'm sure he'll have no difficulty raising the money in spite of these shortcomings. I'd be more than happy to steer this company in the right direction, contributing IP that actually delivers on these promises. All it takes is an e-mail.