Driving the nation’s great solar panel manufacturing comeback
Australian solar innovator SunDrive is determined to build Australia into a solar power manufacturing powerhouse with the help of heavyweight investors in its corner.
Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, Canva founder Cameron Adams, former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Tesla chairman Robyn Denholm are helping SunDrive stage an intervention to take on the dominance of China.
SunDrive’s CEO & co-founder Vince Allen at the company’s commercial demonstration facility in Kurnell.
The solar startup was spun out of a university project founded in 2015 that went on to successfully fabricate the most efficient commercial-size solar cell in the world in 2021.
The push to claw back share of the global market comes amid predicted favourable government policy settings that could provide a tailwind for the nation’s solar industry.
The startup successfully replaced the silver traditionally used in solar panels with copper, which could help it cinch global success. The innovation has bought significant environmental and cost benefits to the manufacturing process because copper is much cheaper than silver and can generate more energy.
“It has been a very hard technical problem to solve because copper doesn’t normally stick to solar cells. Using copper is very significant because copper is about a thousand times more abundant than silver,” SunDrive’s strategic adviser Wyatt Roy says.
Australia’s abundance of natural resources required to manufacture solar gives it a natural competitive advantage. This could help Australia be cost competitive in the coming years and compete on a global scale, he says.
SunDrive has ready access to world-leading Australian technology required to manufacture solar panels that would provide clean and
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