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Replacing the silver in solar panels with cheaper and more abundant copper could deliver more affordable and efficient rooftop solar to consumers, according to a Sydney-based startup aiming to turn Australia into a solar manufacturing powerhouse.
SunDrive’s ambition to become a leading manufacturer of copper solar panels in Australia has attracted the interest of some of the country’s most prominent backers of renewable energy, including Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and the family of Canva co-founder Cameron Adams.
All of them participated in a recent $21 million capital raising, which was led by venture capital firm Main Sequence and the government-owned Clean Energy Finance Corporation to help SunDrive get large-scale production ready to sell its panels in 18 months.
Turnbull described SunDrive’s use of copper instead of silver as “a potential game-changer” in the global race to produce more efficient and scalable solar technology.
SunDrive’s Vince Allen, left, and David Hu. Credit:
The solar industry currently accounts for around 10 per cent of global silver demand, with the International Energy Agency estimating that could reach 30 per cent if the world accelerates along its path to net-zero.
“People in the scientific community have realised for a very long time that silver is unsustainable,” said SunDrive co-founder Vince Allen, who devoted his PhD to finding a way to replace silver with copper after becoming interested in the conundrum during his undergraduate degree.
Under the guidance of supervisor Alison Lennon and solar engineering pioneer Stuart Wenham, Allen found a way to make copper ‘stick’ to photovoltaic panels, a breakthrough that had eluded researchers for years.
But rather than continue with his PhD, which would eventually require sharing his findings with the public, he took the intellectual property he’d developed to his garage and co-founded SunDrive with former flatmate David Hu.
By cutting out silver, which Allen estimates accounts for about half the cost of making solar cells, the pair have created a product which can compete with top-line panels manufactured in China both on price and efficiency: SunDrive says its panels convert more than 25 per cent of received sunlight into power, a world record when it was independently tested in September 2021. By comparison, industry standard panels on most suburban rooftops convert about 20 per cent.