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See-Through Solar: ClearVue Technologies

Alan Kohler sits down with Martin Deil, the chief executive officer of ClearVue Technologies Ltd, to discuss the company's photovoltaic glass operations.

Alan Kohler here and I'm talking to Martin Deil, who is the CEO of ClearVue Technologies, which is a Perth-based company that sells photovoltaic glass that actually is transparent but also collects solar power from the sun — and they do not just the glass, but also the panels that go around the glass, so they can cover an entire building with solar panels, effectively, as part of which is glass that you can see through, so they've got patents around that. My son, Chris, did a piece on this company for Channel Nine News last week which I thought was very interesting and I thought it'd be good to talk to them because they're a listed business, they've been listed since 2018. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster, up and down, they've had high prices, low prices, currently capitalised at about $138 million.

Their pre-revenue, as they say, which is that they're burning cash, but they seem to have a facility in place that will mean that they won't run out of money and they're starting to get orders now. The business model is licencing, they don't actually make the glass, they licence their technology to other companies and they're concentrating on North America because of the subsidies from the Biden Administration, which obviously will go away I guess if Mr Trump wins, but anyway, that's for another day.

Anyway, look, it's interesting, they've got a pretty big pipeline of orders coming. He reckons their technology is unique, they've got patent protections around the world. So, here he is, Martin Deil, CEO of ClearVue Technologies.

Okay, let's talk about your technology, it's come out of Edith Cowan University, right, I think more than 10 years ago?

Yes.

Was it invented by your Chairman, what's his name? I can't remember now...

Victor Rosenberg, exactly. He has always had this idea that really, one needs to push the boundaries of solar energy and we were a bit frustrated that with traditional solar technology you obviously are limited to rooftops and perhaps areas needing a lot of space like solar farms taking up critical agricultural area and so on. So, this whole idea of incorporating solar technology into the vertical surfaces of buildings, that is really what started it and developing a unique technology that you can generate electricity from clear glass, that was the vision 10 years ago and with the recent developments with our products, with the ability to integrate our technology in normal windows, just adding under five minutes of production time using standard automated window lines and so on, that's really what we've achieved since. So, yes, it started just over 10 years ago with this vision to do something very unique and special with solar.

Are you still paying a royalty or will you be paying a royalty to Edith Cowan University?

There is an agreement in place, yes, and we are in the process of negotiating that with them. But yes, at the moment, that is still in place, you're absolutely correct.

And what's the royalty?

I don't know off-hand, I don't have that information available at this present time.

Okay, it's 8 per cent.

Alright, that's about right, yes, there you go, thanks for that.

So, can you just tell us how the technology works in simple language for us?

Sure. Essentially, we are embedding solar or photovoltaic strips in the edges of windows and as the light hits the glass of the window, we include nanoparticles within the surface of the glass and those particles redirect the infrared and the UV light to the edges of the window, where we then pick up and power the electricity, where you kind of harvest the electricity with our embedded strips. So, the window, the glass, remains completely transparent, like a normal window, but it is at the same time generating power, that's it in a nutshell. What it also does and I think that's quite simple to appreciate, as the light is converted into electricity, the infrared light in particular, which is the warm element of the light, doesn't go inside the building to such an extent because we harvest it at the face of the glass, so we are reducing the heat loads within buildings, which means that we're reducing the air conditioning power, for example, that is needed to cool the windows. So, we're not only generating electricity, but our technology also reduces energy consumption within buildings.

Does it also reduce the ultraviolet light getting through?

Both, yes, UV and infrared, that is correct, yes.

How much does it add to the cost of the glass?

It depends a bit on the specification of each glass and so on, but as a rule of thumb, we saw that it adds about $150 US dollars a square metre in the glass, so let's say it doubles the cost of the glass, but other than that, obviously the glass would have to be installed in a framing anyway, so we're not adding — there's no added cost for, say, sub-framing or so to put them up on a roof because our windows are obviously installed just like a normal window with the same depth of the window, the same window width, our technology works with standard window component, so the edge spaces and so on there are the same size as a normal window, so you can just fit that into a frame that you would have a little cable coming out which you would then use to get the power our of the system, so it's very simple, user-friendly and very efficient and quick to adopt.

I did some Googling and found that there's quite a few companies offering photovoltaic glass. Is your technology different to the others? There's a company called Onyx that's claiming to be the world's largest supplier of photovoltaic glass, is that right, are they the largest and what's their technology, I mean is yours different to theirs?

Yes, it is. So, what they do is they really aren't specialists in transparent, clear vision solar, so what they do is they do have products that can be adopted and implemented in the vertical services of buildings, but not the clear vision windows. They wouldn't have a product that, you know — our product, 70 per cent of the light actually goes through the glass so it remains a normal window, yet it generates power. That is not what Onyx do. If you go and check up Onyx, other such companies, they deploy their technology in the solid areas on buildings that, by the way, we can also do. So, we supplement our clear vision windows that generate electricity with the other areas and we also have products that then cover those other areas like Onyx so you can then, what we call the power façade, so you generate electricity across the entire surface of the façade.

But just, as I said, to our knowledge and our opinion, nobody else does a clear vision window that generates power as ours and certainly not to the scale. We can already give you, as we've demonstrated recently, for example, for the CFMEU project in Melbourne, I think those units were about 2 metres or 2.5 metres by 1.5 metres across, there's nobody that can give you those kind of size windows with clear vision, yet generating power. So, we believe that we're quite unique in that aspect.

So, you're saying that all your competitors, their photovoltaic glass is not transparent, is that what you're saying?

That is correct, it's a different technology, they deploy the photovoltaics on solid areas that are non-transparent, they also have products but their transmission is way lower, maybe 40 or 50 per cent, and that's not really if you have a look at the one that you mentioned, Onyx and others, it's really about putting cells in between glass in solid areas, not clear vision areas as we're doing. It's quite a different technology, quite a different offering.

Right. Can you tell us about your patent and IP protection?

Yeah, sure. So, we've always been very lucky in that Jamie has been on our board since more than 10 years, I believe, so he pretty much started — this is Jamie Lyford — he started the company together with Victor and he is a painted specialist, so his background is in legal protection and protecting and managing the IP. For us, we've got more than 150 active patents and protected design rights and so that's always been a core of our philosophy, that there's no point in having great ideas but you need to obviously protect those ideas, so that has always been our philosophy and as of course we're continuing to develop and improve our products, we are continuously filing new patents and design rights as we proceed, so that's really been always at the core of the business and is very, very important and critical to us.

Yes, in fact, you have been consistently spending on R&D and I think you've got a second generation of your product, is that right? What's the difference between gen one and gen two?

Alan, absolutely. Generation one, really had the core of the technology already incorporated but it did require triple layers of glass, so it was obviously heavier. Our product now has two layers of glass. Also, it took a long time to actually make, I think they took about 90 minutes or so to make one window, that is 90 minutes extra per window and it required certain techniques, like for example, soldering of wires that's not an activity that a normal window maker would have knowledge of or competence in. The new generation two is quite different, the new generation two is an easy plug and play system, where we provide our technology to our licence partners and they embed our technology in the windows using their existing automated lines.

So, it's a very low in capital requirement, we don't make the actual windows, we don't produce the final product, we licence the technology and supply the components to our licence manufacturers. So, the generation two, as I mentioned before, very, very simple and easy to integrate that technology, it only takes just under five minutes extra to make a window with our product incorporated and that is really the key difference, so a lot lighter because it's only two layers of glass rather than three and a lot quicker to make and a lot easier to make.

As I said, we can probably with the training of say, two or three hours, we could more or less show any company with an existing automated glazing line how to make windows with our technology incorporated and that's obviously our unique offering, you know, the scalability off us, we could — and of course, we are speaking to a number of licence partners, they are our key drivers to increase our market presence rather than us investing in machines and glass assembly lines and also a network of sales staff. This is all done through our licence partners and we provide the technology to them.