• Soltiles SAS team convened for the first time on November 20, 2016 to set priorities and agree on technical details concerning the project implementation.
• After our testing agency announced in November that they would not be able to start CAD new design drawings on time a nationally recognized testing Lab NRTL-VDE was determined to offer competitive, equivalent IEC certification services.
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• ERSO our Installation Partner informed us March 2017 that they have over 20 residences to install our solar roofing tiles including 5 with residential battery systems to make the Toulouse area homes Net Zero Energy compliant.
• Within fund raising activities, meetings took place on April 5 in Paris with potential institutional investors, including venture funds of banks - See pictures from our Investor package.
•Between and April-Sept 2017, we faced serious challenges:
•Our first design was wrong and would not have passed the European fire standards. Our engineer responsible for the design then resigned and so we hired a new one with electrical, mechanical and CAD experience who corrected the errors;
•Also the supplier who makes electrical connectors, quit after submitting to us 50% completed plans. We selected a harness plug team from a new supplier to replace them;
•The only EU glass company in Belgium that was cutting 2x2 solar glass to go into bankruptcy ->as a result we can get only 2x4 glass from a manufacturer in Asia.
•Due to the above challenges our Deliverable of samples produced in the volume of 200 pieces suffers on a delay estimated of 7 months and the new due date is 30/7/2018. But after these events, we continue with immense efforts in the product development. A 3D print of the tile was prepared by our injection molder and substrate maker from the Netherlands working with our sub-contractor who is the assembler. Attached first photo is showing the Back Contact MWT cells we selected. The second photo shows roofer walking on a Soltiles.
•Injection molder in Spain has reengineered CAD drawings into machine drawings and is printing 3D plastic parts of the new designs to verify that they will all interconnect with each other. We will finally have our first samples of the solar tiles by the end of April. We are four weeks away from starting our real molds. We intend to work with two companies from Spain to do the molding then to produce samples in high volume, so that we can deliver samples produced in the volume of 200 pieces on time.
•Fraunhofer, our second sub-contractor, for pretesting the lamination, is reliable. Fraunhofer after testing has selected a resin company, to supply substrate materials for our tiles. This resin is VO and will pass the flame tests for harness plugs and substrates.
•We signed a preliminary contract at EUPV17 in Amsterdam with a supplier located in Germany for their 23% Back Contact cells.
•We met with a bank in Paris to raise up to €100 Million Bank to scale up the project.
•We also met with an another bank in Paris and we met with a large Investment Bank and we are exchanging at the moment;
•We attended following conferences: April 2 to 7 Silicon PV Conference in Freiburg Germany, April 26 27 Ceres conference Renewables funding conference San Francisco, May 10-12 Investing in Climate for investing in impact Chicago, May 17-19 PV Manufacturing in Europe conference Brussels, May 21-22 PV MaNUFACTURING in Frankfurt to Oder Germany, June 6-7 London Responsible investor conference, June 19-13 intersolar PV conference Munich, July 10-12 Intersolar PV Conference San Francisco, July 16-25 Conference with project partners and Investors in Toulouse, September 25-29 EUPVSEV17 conference Amsterdam EUPVSEC-18 conference in Brussels
June Responsible Investor Conference in London
•We also reviewed and updated our comprehensive Business and Commercialization plan and we updated our company and product presentation (see some slides on photo).
• We changed the design to be 4mm taller and wider to accomodate IEC rules and regulations on electrical safety margins
• We changed the cells to Hetero-Junction cells using smart wire as the connector to eliminate PID, improve aesthetics, improve economics, reduce heat generation
