Barron’s says promising developments in nanotech could boost the fortunes of a couple of solar cell companies. The analyst looks forward to an upcoming presentation on “Advanced Material Applications For Clean Energy,” especially presentations from Luna Innovations CEO Kent Murphy and NanoGram CEO Kieran Drain, who will talk about the impact of organic and inorganic nano-material applications in the generation of solar power.
We believe investors will gain significant insight into how nanomaterials enable cleaner technology solutions. Luna is developing an organic solar cell based on its Trimetasphere nanomaterial and is targeting to demonstrate 7.5% conversion efficiency. If successful, Luna would surpass the current record of 5.4% efficiency, recently demonstrated in August 2007 by Plextronics.
While less conversion efficient relative to inorganic silicon-based solar cells, organic solar materials (plastic solar cells) are expected to be more cost effective, lighter, and also flexible. The light weight and flexibility could enable a broad range of applications such as battery charging.
We reiterate our Buy rating on Luna and $10 price target, which is based on an enterprise value-to-sales multiple of 2.2 times estimated calendar 2008 revenues of $41.8 million.
NanoGram, a private company, is leveraging its patented laser reactive deposition (LRD) process technology to manufacture inorganic nanoparticles that are uniformly distributed in size. Particle size uniformity (well-controlled nano-particle sizes) is an important parameter in the conversion of solar energy to electric power.
I only understand about half of that, but enough to understand that these are two cutting-edge companies and although solar energy collection technology has been around for decades, we’re still in the early stages of developing better ways to do it.
The future is indeed bright.
