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Silicon solar panels have led the market for decades but hit a ceiling around 23% efficiency. Perovskite, a frontier material once dismissed for degrading too fast, is now being called the holy grail of solar.
Saritha Peruri, VP of Commercialization at Tandem PV, is bringing it to market. The company stacks its proprietary perovskite on top of silicon, capturing a wider spectrum of light and pushing efficiency past 30%, a major jump over conventional solar. And because it builds on the silicon PV infrastructure that already exists, the path to scale stays simple.
Getting there wasn’t easy. After a long Series A, Tandem PV raised about $36 million and pulled off something rare in deep-tech hardware: 100% equipment financing for its 40-megawatt demonstration factory. It’s now shipping quarter-sized T20 modules to utility-scale customers who want U.S.-made panels for supply chain certainty and the domestic content kicker. It’s potentially a bridge to a post-ITC world that cuts land and labor costs because each installation needs far fewer modules.
In this episode, host Lara Pierpoint talks with Saritha about reaching high durability, the challenges of financing deep-tech hardware, and the dramatic stories from building their first manufacturing line, including a crisis that nearly sank the company.
