What We Do
Banyan Energy Inc. is a solar power company based in Berkeley, California, USA. We develop breakthrough technologies for photovoltaic modules.
Our customers are the world’s leading crystalline silicon solar cell and module manufacturers. Banyan provides these companies with the ATIR optic front sheet product, along with reference designs for module integration. The customer manufactures the solar cell, integrates cells with Banyan optics into modules, and distributes the modules to the end market.
Modules containing Banyan technology are deployed in one of the fastest growing market segments in the solar industry: large, ground-mounted, single-axis tracked installations. By retaining the standard module form factor, we leverage the existing silicon infrastructure: the same cells, manufacturing processes, and system integration practices that dominate the industry today.
Low costs are essential to success in solar. Even in a world of abundant, low cost polysilicon feedstock, the processing of polysilicon into ingots, wafers, and cells is relatively expensive – the finished solar cell drives >70% of the overall module cost. By reducing the cell requirement by 5-10x, we drive down the costs of crystalline silicon modules to lead the industry.
In addition, we believe that the next major lever for competitive advantage in solar lies with capital efficiency. With Banyan, 1GW of traditional ingot, wafer, and cell manufacturing capacity can deliver more than 5GW of modules, avoiding over $4B in capex. This dramatically increases our customers’ scalability and returns on invested capital. Over the long run, we believe the combination of low cost, scalability and capital efficiency will determine the winners in the solar industry.
To summarize – with Banyan, silicon companies can:
- Increase scale of module production: 1GW of cells deliver 5GW of modules
- Achieve the lowest capex per Watt for manufacturing capacity in the industry
- Deliver the lowest costs in the industry
- Leverage their existing silicon infrastructure: cell technology, manufacturing, and system integration