Solar panels are just about everywhere. There’s a good chance one of your neighbors has them on their roof, as does the big box store down the stree

Merlin Solar bets twisty panels will help it land on rooftops everywhere

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2024-11-01 00:00:07

Solar panels are just about everywhere. There’s a good chance one of your neighbors has them on their roof, as does the big box store down the street. As you drive there, you might see a field of them posted up alongside the road. With that kind of ubiquity, you’d be forgiven if you thought there wasn’t room for improvement.

Murali, founder and CTO of Merlin Solar, has been working a new angle on solar for nearly a decade. He founded the company in 2016, after Solyndra’s spectacular implosion in 2011 and as Chinese manufacturers were driving panels down a vertiginous cost curve. But Murali remained fixated, though he did take a lesson from the debacle.

Instead, Merlin Solar turned to an existing and widely used solar technology — monocrystalline silicon. Solar cells made with the stuff are inexpensive but fragile; to prevent fractures, companies usually sandwich monocrystalline silicon within two panels of glass bordered by a metal frame. That makes panels heavy, and it limits where they can be installed.

Murali wanted flexible solar panels, but using monocrystalline silicon posed a challenge. “Everything crystalline will eventually crack,” Murali said. “Can we make sure every electron will find its way, even if a bullet went through?”