Moser Baer acquires stake in US nanotechnology firm Stion Corporation

Mumbai: Moser Baer Photo Voltaic Ltd (MBPV), a wholly owned subsidiary of Moser Baer India Ltd, has acquired a significant minority stake in Stion Corporation, a nanostructures technology company based in California, formerly known as NStructures.

Moser Baer had earlier announced strategic equity participation in two other solar concentrator technology companies - Solaria and Solfocus.

"This is yet another landmark in our quest to partner actively in the development of next generation technologies in the PV space," said Ratul Puri, executive director of the company.

The third investment is also part of the company's earlier announcement of $17 million MBPV investments into emerging solar cell technologies. MBPV is focusing on this high growth industry and developing a sustainable competitive edge by investing into disruptive technologies like concentrator photovoltaic (CPV), nanotechnology, etc that is forcing the restructuring of the dominant solar technologies with a potential to compete with existing PV and conventional energy technologies.

Stion Corporation is a pioneer in the cutting-edge nanostructure-based PV technologies. The nanostructure particles are custom tunable using several substrate materials to create multiple junction materials capable of absorbing nearly the entire solar light spectrum. This would result in very high efficiency solar cells at a low cost. The technology involves leveraging and optimising the existing advanced technology for nano-particles specifically for the generation of electricity from solar energy.

"This is in line with our strategy to reduce the cost of solar power generation significantly by straddling multiple future technologies and emerge as an engineering and technology driven company. We are decisively responding to the rapidly expanding solar PV market, where worldwide demand far outstrips supply," Ravi Khanna, CEO of Moser Baer Photovoltaic Ltd, said.

Global photovoltaic sales are expected to grow over six-fold to $40 billion by 2010. This demand is also highly price elastic. A lowering of PV electricity costs to conventional levels could exponentially expand this market as PV starts to penetrate into base load demand of electricity.