It was only three weeks ago that Prism Solar announced they had a plan to increase their workforce by 200 in the next two years and then possibly by another 200 in five years. We might be asking what’s next from Prism, as they made an announcement on April 21 that in addition to those 400 jobs there is the potential for another 150 to 200 jobs to be created beginning in 2011.
These jobs will not be materializing out of thin air. Prism Solar, who recently purchased a new headquarters in Highland, is creating the jobs because it has patents on two solar energy technologies it will be manufacturing in the Hudson Valley. The technology responsible for the potential 400 jobs announced in early April is a "holographic planar concentrator technology" which reduces the need for silicon in solar modules while increasing output. That technology will be sold on the open market.
Prism Solar CEO Rick Lewandowski told t he Hudson Valley Business Journal that the technology announced at an April 21 press conference across the street from their new headquarter is a "single crystal ribbon technology." He said, "it nicely complements our holographic technology. It’s very thin, very cost effective and very high efficiency." Unlike the holographic technology which will go out to market, the main use for the ribbon technology will be on Prism’s own solar modules.
"It’s a couple years away," he said. "In the next 24 months we will have a couple universities working on this technology. We have the equipment now and some agreements with universities. We also are closer on our funding. This will be a whole other company that spins off of Prism. We’ll start out growing the ribbon here [at the company’s headquarters] and once it’s ready for commercialization, it will probably need another facility."
Lewandowski said he could not yet announce what universities are helping on the project, but would be able to do so soon. The single crystal technology first was researched by Westinghouse over 20 years ago, he said, and has seen over $180 million in research and development expenditure over the last two decades. "This was developed over many, many years," Lewandowski said. Congressman Maurice Hinchey, who helped to facilitate a $1,000,000 grant to Prism Solar through The Solar Energy Consortium, said he hoped that any spin-off facilities from Prism Solar would be located at Kingston’s Tech City.
