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Low Carbon Accelerator Limited has announced that it has made an investment of £480,000 in QuantaSol Limited for a 15.34% equity stake.
The investment was part of an overall £1.35 million seed funding round which also included investment from Imperial Innovations, Numis Securities Ltd, Netscientific Ltd, and Sheffield University Enterprise. Low Carbon Accelerator and Imperial Innovations were co-lead equity investors.
QuantaSol plans to provide solar photovoltaic ("PV") cells for use in concentrating photovoltaic ("CPV") systems for the fast growing utility-scale solar power generation market. QuantaSol will use the funds to produce prototypes of its Quantum Well Photovoltaic ("QWPV") cells and to engage with potential customers for such cells.
CPV systems use relatively inexpensive optics such as mirrors or lenses to concentrate or focus light from a broad collection area onto a much smaller area of active semiconductor PV cell material. Since the PV semiconductor material usually dominates the costs of a solar PV system, reducing the amount of PV material required to capture a given amount of sunlight leads to substantially lower system cost and cost per watt of output.
QuantaSol's "third generation" cells are based on gallium arsenide and other semiconductor materials. These materials are more expensive than silicon, which is commonly used for flat panel PV cells, but have more than double the photovoltaic efficiency. QuantaSol plans to manufacture single and multi-junction concentrator solar cells with efficiency levels of up to 40% as opposed to silicon and thin film cells whose efficiencies are below 20%.
The company has a strong and experienced management team which includes CEO Kevin Arthur who has twenty-three years of international business development and operational experience in semiconductor manufacturing companies and technology start-ups.
Following the investment, the board of QuantaSol will be strengthened further with the appointment of Oliver Hemsley, CEO of Numis Securities, as a non-executive director.
QuantaSol was formed in 2006 and is based on the research of Professor Keith Barnham, Emeritus Professor of Physics and Senior Research Investigator in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London; Dr. Massimo Mazzer, Senior Researcher of the National Research Council of Italy and Dr. John Roberts, Senior Research Scientist at The University of Sheffield.
Dr. Stephen Mahon, Chief Investment Officer at Low Carbon Initiative, LCA's investment manager, said: "We are pleased to be supporting this innovative technology from such a team of world-class scientists. Last year the International Energy Agency noted that some of the key challenges facing the PV industry were making cells more efficient and increasing their lifespan. QuantaSol's technology will help meet these challenges as they scale up to become a significant player in the concentrated PV market."
Kevin Arthur, CEO of QuantaSol, said: "We are very grateful for the support that we have received from Low Carbon Accelerator, and are looking forward to working with them and the rest of the investor group to take QuantaSol forward to become a major global supplier of third generation, high efficiency solar cells."
This article can be found in its original format on the Carbon International website
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