Insolight: bringing solar panel to 40% efficiency

Insolight founder and project leader Laurent Coulot explains how Insolight revolutionizes the market of solar energy and tells us about his participation in the venturelab workshops this year.

Hello Laurent, first could you tell us more about yourself and your team?
The founding team is formed of three dynamic EPFL alumni who graduated in micro-engineering a few years ago: Florian Gerlich, Chief Operating Officer, Mathieu Ackermann, Chief technology officer and myself. Our complementary experiences in the industry is helping us to cover the business challenges of our project.


Where did the idea of your startup come from?
I got to work with various solar cells technologies and realized that technologies which are scalable on large areas were always limited in terms of efficiency, mostly at less than 20%. Our idea was to move the problem from semiconductors to optics: we designed a novel solution to simplify the sun tracking and light concentration, allowing us to make the most efficient and cost effective solar cells using affordable technologies, with the aim to reach a 40% efficiency.

This sounds impressive! How can you achieve 40% instead of the usual 20%?
Our technology, called “planar optical micro-tracking”, consists of thin optical layers that can redirect sunlight coming from any direction towards the concentrator. While many solar concentrators exist, they all present the same drawback: they need to be constantly aligned towards the sun. In our case, the concentrator stays at a fixed position and can be mounted like any flat solar panels. This solution allows to drastically reduce the solar cell area.  

What will this bring to your customers?
Today, most of the margin of solar developers, such as Solar City, relies on subsidies or incentives. These subsidies are decreasing, and solar energy needs to become price competitive with fossil fuels. So with high efficiency and ease of mounting combined, we open new perspectives to cost improvement for competitive solar electricity.  

You participate in the venturelab workshops in 2016. What are you expecting from the 8 acceleration modules? 
As we mostly have an engineering background, we seek for pragmatic business advices and marketing tools to support us building a great company, running customer acquisition and fundraising. venturelab workshops can truly help us in our daily operations. 

“With good interpersonal skills, everything becomes possible.”

In your opinion, what are the fundamental pillars necessary to succeed?
The first one is the team cohesion and collaboration. We had worked together in the past and our communication is pretty straightforward. The second is to transform ideas into real products, with a lucid and pragmatic execution and a full dedication. The latter is related to our field of activity, as we all strongly believe that innovation is required in energy.

As an entrepreneur, what keeps you up at night? 
(laughs). I eventually dream of optics simulations! To move forward in our development, we are also often confronted with roadblocks, like finding the right suppliers.  

Tell us a fun fact about you?
There is one that I love telling (laughs). It was when I was in the US, to sell my old car that had 30 years and 450,000 kilometers on the clock. The engine collapsed and left me alone in the middle of the highway. In Switzerland normally you have to pay for getting rid of such a wreck. I still put a selling offer on Craiglist – I had nothing to lose.  I received three calls on the same day! 

A buyer came over but knit his brows when he saw the car. We started discussing, and when he realized I was European, he started chatting about soccer for more than half an hour without mentioning the car– I thought the deal would never happen. At the end I asked him whether he still wanted the car. He answered without hesitation: of course my friend, I take it! With good interpersonal skills, everything becomes possible!