Opel Solar Inc.
3 Corporate Drive, Suite 204
Shelton 06484
203-612-2366
opelinc.com
President and CEO: Robert Pico
No. employees: 30
For nearly a decade, Opel Solar has been perfecting new technology to harness the sun’s power more efficiently.
The company designs and manufactures photovoltaic solar concentrating panels and single and dual access ground-based and rooftop tracking systems.
Unlike conventional single-cell solar panels with silicon wafers, Opel high-performance panels are multilayered, contain gallium arsenide, a compound used in optoelectronic devices, and produce higher efficiencies at lower cost.
“Forty percent is about the peak efficiency, which compares to 20 percent of regular cells, says Frank Middleton, Opel Solar’s vice president of market.
Opel was formed in 2001 by several telecommunication industry veterans and UConn engineers working on a new process for making computer chips, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and power amplifiers in cell phones.
“When a few other people joined, they found there were other uses for this triple-junction gallium arsenide cell, and that is how we got into the solar side of the business,” explains Pat Agudow. Opel’s vice president of administration and policy management.
A year after forming the solar subsidiary in 2006, Opel recapitalized, doing a reverse merger with the shell of a former company listed on the Canadian stock exchange, and became a public company (TXS VENTURE: OPL).
Opel’s military division, ODIS, currently works with the U.S. Department of Defense on “laser-type products,” Agudow says, but its main business is “developing solar, clean energy solutions for businesses, institutions and utilities.”
Most of the growth so far has been in Europe, where governments have feed-in tariffs, which pay premium prices for renewable energy, and where Opel created a Brussels-based subsidiary, OPL Solar Europe, in 2008 to form joint ventures and limited partnerships.
Last month Opel Solar signed an international dealer agreement with SOLYPAC Technology Co Ltd of Seoul, South Korea.
And the company recently received a $179,000 grant from a joint U.S. Treasury and Department of Energy program for installing one of Connecticut’s first solar rooftop tracking systems on a Plainfield elementary school.
“It would be nice to have one or two bills passed at the federal level that truly signify the commitment in the solar energy and renewable energy fields,” Agudow says.
Opel also is spreading the word about the benefits of its leading edge solar technology in other venues. The company participated in the PV Power Plants 2009 USA conference and will present at the CPV Summit USA in San Diego next month.
“The competition is conventional technology,” Middleton says. “Utilities are very risk-adverse and want to go with true-and-tried, but you do have some progressive utilities with subsidiaries devoted to new technologies.
“In the U.S. independent power producers tend to be more aggressive in terms of new technology.”
Last October, Opel and Spanish partner BETASOL completed a utility-grade solar photovoltaic power plant in Spain capable of generating 330 kilowatts of electricity. One of the first operable solar grid fields in the world, the solar farm, which has high performance panels mounted on dual access trackers, it has become a showpiece for potential clients, according to Agudow.
“We’ve also deployed systems in Italy, South Korea, Canada, Portugal and France, and are involved in bidding much larger projects,” Middleton says.
“The amount of projects under consideration has increased exponentially,” adds Agudow. “They’re no longer a few hundred kilowatts; they’re megawatts.”
A few favorable decisions will brighten Opel Solar’s future.
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