Solar Grade Silicon roads lead to Ruše - Part 3

[Maribor and Ruše, Slovenia]

TDR - Metalurgija Visit with Solarvalue AG

Photo: TDR facility with Solarvalue redlines and my blue circle of the Ferrochrome Building

Since Solar Grade Silicon roads lead to Ruše - Part 2 (please see the end of this post for corrections), the news flow from Solarvalue AG (XETRA:SV7) (http://www.solarvalue.com) has been disappointing. While I know readers were anticipating the next installment of the Ruše series, both investors and I have lost confidence in the company after:

Solarvalue to proceed without Strategic Partners
Additional Solarvalue AG Secondary Placements Planned
Solarvalue Newsletter 1/2007

Per my mobile’s missed call log, Mr. Fischer or someone in his office did attempt to contact me on February 9, 2007. But my simple questions remain unanswered.

Instead of looking at Solarvalue method Process II and Process III as promised, this installment will cover John Mott's presentation of the current conversion plan for the TDR M6 arc furnace and Solar Grade Silicon production at the Kepler Equities Alternative Energies Conference.

In order to prepare M6 for silicon metal production, Mr. Mott said:

This involves changing the electrode columns to allow use of high-purity carbon electrodes, installing a bearing assembly under the furnace hearth to allow it to rotate in operation, and replacing the hearth carbon lining. Additions to the mix system are underway.

M6’s higher power output of 24MW (Megawatt), 6MW more than M5 (I had 12MW for M5 and 20MW for M6 before?), is offered as a reason for the arc furnace change and maintaining the 2007 Solar Grade Silicon (SGS) production goal of 850 metric tons. I suspect there must be a major or catastrophic issue with the M5 arc furnace for a plan that requires a bearing assembly to be installed on M6.

John Mott also said:

A thorough cleaning and sealing of the entire furnace building will be undertaken as soon as the furnace hearth is relined in order to prevent any contamination of the mix or silicon produced by impurities present in either prior operations or from adjacent areas of the plant.

This was not news. Continuing, John said:

Design work has begun to transform the existing Ferrochrome Building into the new SGS Facility where the very clean metal produced in M6 is further refined into Solar Grade Silicon by careful washing of the metal in the molten state and the use of new solidification techniques. All of the metal made in M6 will be processed through the SGS Facility with an expected initial yield of 20% as Solar Grade. Additional improvements and refinements to the process and equipment are on the drawing board or already in testing to incrementally improve the process yield.

Consolidating SGS operations in the Ferrochrome Building was not the plan of record back in November 2006 during my visit to the TDR facility. SGS Process II and Process III steps were then planned for the Future Solar Grade Silicon Production Building as shown in the TDR facility redline above and the close up photo below. Consolidation of operations makes sense to take advantage of the molten state of the silicon metal produced in the M6 arc furnace. Silicon has a melting point of 1414 °C (degrees Celsius), so leveraging silicon in the molten state is necessary to avoid wasting energy during processing as I learned from John Mott during the visit.

John Mott presented the following Production Calendar:

January 2007: Start conversion of first production line (6 months) in TDR-Factory in Ruse, Slovenia
3. Quarter of 2007: Start production of solar grade silicon (SGS)
2007: Production of 850 metric tonnes of SGS
End of 2008: Capacity for 4,400 metric tonnes of SGS

While I believe SGS production is delayed at least (please note the three methods of emphasis: bold, italics, and underline) a quarter with the M6 upgrades, I find the unchanged 2007 SGS production target of 850 metric tons a bit unbelievable. I don’t have experience with metallurgical silicon production, but a 33% increase in system power with M6 does not seem to equate to a doubling of output. I had planned to ridicule a PHOTON International article, “Cheap silicon?”, from PI 11/2006, p.102-108, by Michael Schmela, but taking 20-25% of Solarvalue’s 20% SGS production yield target claims may have been prescient insight.

Solarvalue’s Financial Calendar was disclosed as follows:

1. Quarter 2007: Annual Report 2006
1. Half 2007: General Meeting
1. Half 2007: Secondary Placement
1. Half 2007: Entry Standard

I look forward to reading Solarvalue’s first annual report, and existing shareholders should be concerned with the pricing and dilution from the Secondary Placement planned for the first half of 2007.

The new Solarvalue AG website is live and has a classic localization mistake. Text with language icons should always be localized in the native tongue; English should always read English just as German should always be Deutsch.

GP Note: Solarvalue reimbursed me for my flights to Berlin and Graz. I maintain independent editorial control over this article series, I have not been paid to write them, and I do not own any shares of Solarvalue AG stock.

Corrections to Solar Grade Silicon roads lead to Ruše - Part 2 per John Mott:
M6 is running at an electrode current of about 72,000 amps currently at 20MW. But, the current would have been lower when you saw it at 14MW. M6 and M5 both only have one transformer, only M1 has three separate transformers. It doesn't really matter to the operation. Also, M6 is making 75% FeSi, which is always pretty damned close to 75% silicon and 25% iron.

Solaria presenting at Alternative Energy Symposium

Piper Jaffray & Co. (NYSE:PJC) is hosting its second annual Alternative Energy Symposium tomorrow, February 21, 2007, in New York City, New York USA.

I saw a spike in searches for Solaria Corporation on the Blog today.

At first, I thought the interest in Solaria might have been a result of Silicon Valley Solar’s deal with ErSol for so called high efficiency monocrystalline solar cells supporting the development and early production of SV Solar’s Sol-X2 low concentration solar modules.

However, it appears the increased traffic is related to Solaria’s scheduled company presentation at this symposium. In the event new release, Solaria is one of the few private firms presenting at the one day event. The companies scheduled to present include a number of European solar photovoltaic firms not listed in the United States including: ErSol Solar Energy AG (FRA:ES6), Q-Cells AG (FRA:QCE), and Renewable Energy Corporation ASA (OSL:REC) but SolarWorld AG (FRA:SWV) is absent from the news release.

Alexander “Andy” Karsner, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Dr. Hermann Scheer will keynote at this event. This event highlights Dr. Scheer’s New York stop of his Energy Autonomy Book Presentation Tour USA.

I placed my unedited videos From Towards Energy Autonomy (at Google) on Google Video. My lousy video editor messed up the audio sync when I split the videos in two to get under the YouTube 100MB limit. Here are the links:

Martin Roscheisen
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8935046867093189314

Dr. Hermann Scheer
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4751316931546195907

Gen 3 Solar changes name to OptiSolar

Trademark conflict with DayStar Technologies

If you check the Gen 3 Solar website, as of January 1, 2007, they changed the name of their company to OptiSolar, Inc. I heard about the reason behind the name change last week from an acquaintance.

At the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, www.uspto.gov, you can find this information using the Trademark Electronic Search System (Tess). I could not link to the specific trademark pages because the sessions time out.

DayStar Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:DSTI) trademarked “Gen-III” (or “GEN-III”) back on September 28, 2005. Gen 3 Solar filed for the OPTISOLAR trademark on October 6, 2006, so this must have been brewing last year.

OptiSolar, located in Hayward, California USA, is developing solar thin films made with 500 times less silicon than mainstream silicon wafer based approaches. Judging by their impressive Management Team bios, OptiSolar appears to be focused on amorphous silicon (a-Si) technologies using “a novel, low cost, deposition technique” developed by Co-CEO Dr. Marv Keshner and Chief Scientist Paul McClelland. A few members of OptiSolar’s Management Team and Board of Directors have links to OPTI Canada Inc. (TSE:OPC), an alternative energy company making crude oil from Canadian oil sands using its proprietary OrCrude™ process.

Although OptiSolar (or Gen 3 Solar) is not mentioned, I uncovered a German article reprint, Aufbruch aus der Nische (literal translation: Departure from the Niche or my translation: Going Mainstream) by Johannes Bernreuter from Sonne Wind & Wärme 12/2006 with a comprehensive survey of thin film solar technologies and companies including compact summary tables. If your first, second, and third language is English, the tables should be usable, but I don’t know of a .pdf file language translator. My tip is to select the text and paste it into Google Translate.

One tip to the OptiSolar folks, you missed a GEN3 on the new OptiSolar website here.

Solarvalue beta website and Blog(?!)

Solarvalue beta links live!

Solarvalue AG (XETRA:SV7) HAS NOT announced these beta links! Check out the new Solarvalue website here and even a Solarvalue Blog here before they are no longer accessible or the new website is launched.

I was just reviewing sources of traffic to my Blog when I stumbled upon this. So I guess Solarvalue is tired of those pesky Bloggers asking hard news questions, and they have decided to cut out the middleman. I am not saying where I found this. After all, I need to keep a few secrets to preserve my PV Blogger job!

Towards Energy Autonomy (at Google)

New Politics for Renewable Energy

Dr. Hermann Scheer (Deutsch) elaborated on ideas from his latest book, Energy Autonomy: The economic, social, and technological case for renewable energy, to a sold out audience at Google Building 40 in Mountain View. The event was organized by German American Business Association of California, Inc. and the MIT Club of Northern California Clean Technology Program.

A full webcast of the event should go online tomorrow (or sooner?), so I wanted to get my video snipets of the Martin Roscheisen's introduction and the first four to five minutes of Dr. Scheer's talk posted ASAP.

For more video, check out Energy Autonomy - The Code of Survival, a media project based on Herman Scheer’s book. Experience the film (German only so far/ Deutsch) and discover and support the project (Deutsch).

Poly Plant Project delivers Turnkey Polysilicon Plants

Technology focused on the Siemens process

Founded in 2005, the Poly Plant Project, Inc. (PPP) helps aspiring polysilicon oligarchs and companies moving up the value chain to research, design, and construct polysilicon production facilities based on trichlorosilane (TCS) chemistry or the “Siemens process”.

Lead by Chairman & CEO Tetsunori (Terry) T. Kunimune, owner of the Kunical International Group, Ltd., Poly Plant Project’s team includes polysilicon industry veterans with extensive “experience in the engineering, design, construction, expansion, and operation of polysilicon production plants.” PPP’s business model targets solar photovoltaic (PV) industry companies interested in building polysilicon production plants for vertical integration and to supply partners and even competitors with solar grade polysilicon (SoG-Si) for the production of solar cells.

Viewing the PPP company presentation, PPP - Your Partner for Proven TCS-Based Polysilicon Plant Planning & Design, reveals a majority of consulting inquiries originating from China, a number in Russia, and even one in North Africa (Tunisia or Libya?). Getting started with PPP on a polysilicon plant is just a 2-way Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) away.

With the demand for polysilicon showing no signs of abating, it is no surprise polysilicon engineering and consulting firms have booming businesses. Another firm, CH2M HILL Lockwood Greene, received a contract from solar and polysilicon newbie, Hoku Scientific, Inc. (NASDAQ:HOKU), to provide engineering and related services for subsidiary Hoku Materials' first polysilicon production facility.

I received a tip about this company, so suggest a bit a due diligence is in order before investing half a billion US Dollars in your first polysilicon production plant. Since PPP is located in Burbank, California, near Hollywood, they must receive the occasional crank caller interested in silicone instead of silicon.

Also, I suggest their Indian website designers, TRIGUNS, consider there is Copyleft for open source and Copyright, but no Copywright for original works of authorship!

Peter Aschenbrenner under SEC investigation in AstroPower Saga

Trouble under the SunPower

Well, you can tell I have been distracted by personal issues to not notice this blockbuster and underreported news: SunPower sales up; SEC investigates employee (free registration may be required). This story was first reported by Sarah Jane Tribble at the Mercury News with contributions from Troy Wolverton.

Per an amended Current Report 8-K/A filed by SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ:SPWR) with the SEC on January 25, 2007, Peter Aschenbrenner was sent a Wells Notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on December 12, 2006. The Wells Notice relates to Mr. Aschenbrenner’s role as Sr. Vice President, Global Operations, with AstroPower and alleges improper revenue recognition and insider trading. Here is the relevant section from the amended filing buried on page 50:

From April 1994 through March 2003, Mr. Aschenbrenner served as senior vice President of Global Operations at AstroPower, Inc., a solar product manufacturing company that filed for bankruptcy in February 2004 and was acquired by the General Electric Corporation. By letter dated December 12, 2006, the SEC enforcement staff notified Peter Aschenbrenner (in what is commonly referred to as a “Wells Notice”) that it intended to recommend that the SEC take legal action against him. The Wells Notice alleges that Mr. Aschenbrenner played a role in AstroPower, Inc.’s allegedly improper recognition of revenue and that Mr. Aschenbrenner committed insider trading. Under the SEC’s rules Mr. Aschenbrenner is permitted to make a submission to the staff in which he seeks to persuade the SEC that no such action should be commenced. Mr. Aschenbrenner reports that he has obtained an extension of time to file his response, and that it is now due on February 8, 2007. The transactions at issue in the Wells Notice predate Mr. Aschenbrenner’s tenure with the Company, and the SEC’s inquiry is not directed at, and does not concern, the Company or any other member of the Board or management.

If you need a primer on the AstroPower story, please review my epic forensic post: AstroPower: Decline of a solar photovoltaic star remains an untold tragedy?

Given the notice and this historical article at Solarbuzz, AstroPower Announces Management Changes; CEO And CFO Resign, citing Peter Aschenbrenner leaving AstroPower in the same time frame, it appears Mr. Aschenbrenner is one of the two other management employees removed by AstroPower’s Board of Directors as announced on May 27, 2003. Was the other unnamed management employee also sent a Wells Notice?

Per the Mercury News, SunPower has not disclosed when they learned of the Wells Notice to Mr. Aschenbrenner:

SunPower spokeswoman Julie Blunden declined to disclose when Aschenbrenner told SunPower executives about the notice, but called it a ``personnel matter.''

However, the time line raises questions about when SunPower and their Board of Directors learned of the notice and if this influenced their decision to remove Mr. Aschenbrenner’s Sales responsibilities and executive officer status per the original Current Report 8-K first filed on January 10, 2007:

In connection with the completion of the Merger, the Board appointed Mr. Dinwoodie as Chief Executive Officer of the PowerLight business, Mr. Wenger as Executive Vice President, Sales of the Company and Mr. Ledesma as General Counsel of the Company. In addition, the Board appointed Peter Aschenbrenner, formerly the Vice President, Sales and Marketing of SunPower, as Vice President, Marketing of the Company. In light of the change in Mr. Aschenbrenner’s responsibilities, the Board determined that he would no longer be an executive officer of SunPower.

In an ironic twist, SunPower’s new Vice President, Sales, (or Vice President, Global Business Units?) Mr. Howard Wenger, is also an AstroPower alumnus, last serving as Vice President, North American Business, for AstroPower, Inc.

I was excited to notice a few folks from the SEC reading my AstroPower post last year. It is my sincere hope this may have helped or prodded their further investigation of the events leading up to the AstroPower bankruptcy.

And if you are an email subscriber to GUNTHER Portfolio, I apologize for the random mailings by FeedBurner of two old posts in the last week. I have posted a question about this on one of their support forums, but I am wondering if this is instead a New Blogger issue.

Solarvalue Newsletter 1/2007

For those of you who did not subscribe (Deutsch) to be kept informed about current events at Solarvalue AG, below is the unedited newsletter emailed on February 7, 2007. You can download the attachment, Kepler AE Conf Programme_2007.pdf here. I imagine there was a German version of the newsletter which may have contained information not lost in translation.

I felt an obligation to post this newsletter since I was the first to cover the Solarvalue saga even though I am not a happy camper these days. The request I sent to Solarvalue’s new Investor Relations consultant, Maximilian Fischer, for further clarification of their new arrangement with W&P Profil remains unanswered since I posted Solarvalue to proceed without Strategic Partners.

These are the simple questions I sent:
Can you explain the announced transaction with your Partner W&P Profil in more detail?
Is this a sale lease back or foundry arrangement?

Here is the newsletter:

Dear shareholders,
Dear Sir/Madam,

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to introduce myself as your new contact for all questions concerning Solarvalue shares and investor relations.

You can reach me at the following address:

Investor Relations Contact Partner:
Maximilian Fischer, max. Equity Marketing GmbH,
D-80333 München, Tel. +49-89-54 88 39 12, Fax 54 88 39 13, info@max-em.de, www.max-em.de

By way of introduction allow me to present you with our Newsletter 1/2007, which informs you about our activities.

::Website relaunch:: We are currently redesigning our website www.solarvalue.com ! The new version will be online in just a few days. We will keep you posted.

::Interview with the Management Board:: Read the interview our CEO, Claudia Boehringer, gave on 25th January 2007. The interview is available on the www.solarvalue.de start page.

::Alternative Energies Conference, Paris (Kepler Equities):: John Mott, COO of Solarvalue Production d.d., spoke at the Alternative Energies Conference in Paris on 1st February 2007 about the current status of the retrofitting of our TDR factory in Ruse, Slovenia. His presentation can be downloaded from our start page. Please find attached the conference programme, which underlines the high standard of the event. A total of ca. 250 institutional investors from Europe and the United States took part in the conference.
http://www.solarvalue.de/files/pressespiegel/070201_Solarvalue_Paris_Kepler_Website.pdf

Best regards

Maximilian Fischer
Investor Relations Solarvalue AG

PS: If you do not wish to receive further issues of the Solarvalue AG Newsletter, please respond to this e-mail by writing "no newsletter". This newsletter is sent to you if you registered to receive our newsletter via our website or sent us a request in the past.

NJCEP November 2006 Greater Than 10kW CORE QUEUE Analysis

SunEdison’s business model dominates rebate backlog at PowerLight’s expense

Although it has been over two months since I reported about the NJCEP November 2006 CORE Queue Updates, I have now completed an analysis of New Jersey's Clean Energy Program™ CORE Queue for installations greater than 10kW (kiloWatt) in size.

The CORE Queue > 10kw Nov 22, 2006, has 285 rebate applications up from 199 in the September 15, 2006, release. While 88 new applications were added to the Queue, five (5) mystery applications were inserted: GT10PVT-0215, GT10PVT-0250, GT10PVT-0313, GT10PVT-0326A, and GT10PVT-0329A, while six (6) applications were deleted without explanation: GT10PVT-0074, GT10PVT-0081, GT10PVT-0098, GT10PVT-0161, GT10PVT-0236, GT10PVT-0236A, and GT10PVT-0246.

Applications GT10PVT-0368 and GT10PVT-0369 appear to have whopper class errors in the System Size column; they must be 18.928kW and 26.000kW instead of 18928kW (18.928MW) and 26000kW (26.000MW) respectively!

Five (5) rebate applications, GT10PVT-0251, GT10PVT-0252, GT10PVT-0273, GT10PVT-0274, and GT10PVT-0275, from MAK Technologies have been claimed by The Solar Center since their merger.

The 285 rebate applications break down as follows: 2 Complete, 6 Check Requests, 65 Approved, 174 under CEP Review, 28 Denied, and 9 Cancelled.

NJ Solar Power and Sun Farm Ventures completed small installations of 10.14kW and 12.852kW. Sun Farm Ventures received Check Requests for six (6) installations of 98.6 kWs of system capacity and $467,256 in rebates.

Per confirmation from SunEdison LLC’s PR agency, Media First Public Relations, I have combined rebate applications from New Vision Technologies and NVT Licenses, LLC, both SunEdison subsidiaries, and listed them as SunEdison.

On the approved list, the top five (5) companies were as follows:

Dome-Tech Solar, LLC 2102kW $6,885,000

PowerLight Corporation 1410kW $4,677,768

SunEdison 1241kW $4,668,048

NJ Solar Power 1155kW $4,088,474

WorldWater Corp. 1161kW $4,033,633

Dome-Tech takes the lead in approved projects. On January 10, 2007, Ted Turner partnered with Dome-Tech to create DT Solar as announced in Ted Turner Launches New Clean Energy Business Venture.

In my last major analysis, NJCEP Greater than 10 kWp Solar Rebate Application Queue for Private Sector Installations - Market Analysis, PowerLight led this category.

On the CEP Review list, SunEdison establishes itself as the breakaway New Jersey market leader in large photovoltaic installations project backlog. Here are the top five (5) companies with applications under CEP Review:

SunEdison 15718kW $45,029,694

PPL Energy Services 2800kW $8,872,500

PowerLight Corporation 2571.7kW $7,731,332

American Energy Technology 2078kW $6,559,136

NJ Solar Power, LLC 1594.3kW $5,344,349

PowerLight’s rebate backlog has halved since May 2006 while SunEdison has racked over five times the rebate backlog. The SunEdison approach is to deliver solar electricity as a service, not a product by maximizing business Investment Tax Credits, accelerated depreciation, tax write offs, and financial instruments. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) is a lead investor and advisor to SunEdison. I suspect PowerLight’s market position in New Jersey has been deteriorating since before their acquisition by SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ:SPWR). See Strange deal under the Sun for a reasonable analysis of the SunPower acquisition of PowerLight that goes beyond the mindless cheerleaders that applaud any development in the renewable energy space.

In an interesting twist to the rebate queue, the companies successful at landing business have the most denied rebate applications. Here are the top four (4) companies with Denied rebate applications:

New Vision Technologies (SunEdison) 2337.9kW $7,675,112

PowerLight Corporation 2097.9kW $6,930,912

altPower 699kW $2,291,416

WorldWater Corp. 501kW $1,657,765

Last but not least, Northern Power Systems leads the dubious Cancelled rebate application category with 250kW and $856,382 in rebates.

And Sunburn Solar’s website has been down since I first mentioned them here. I know if my blog were offline, it would drive me nuts until it was corrected.

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC INVESTMENTS

EPIA organized event in Brussels, Belgium, on February 13-14, 2007

I wasn’t even aware of this event when I crafted my Photovoltaic Conference and Exhibition Preview 2007, so I thought I would profile it and give my quick take.

Organized by EPIA (European Photovoltaic Industry Association) with support from the European Photovoltaic Technology Platform and the EREC (European Renewable Energy Council) directed RESTMAC project, the agenda for this two day workshop will cover Photovoltaic market trends, Country market assessments, and Removing financial barriers. The workshop is geared towards bringing ubiquitous Investors and Banks together with the photovoltaic industry representatives and developers crowd.

My first impression from the registered companies list was this event is geared to larger, established companies in the photovoltaic space. Maybe this event would be a chance for investors to get a northern hemisphere winter mid-quarter update on the aggregate state of European and international photovoltaic markets and public investments. Later, a company name at the top of the list attracted my attention: ARENDI SRL. This raises my expectations additional new and start up photovoltaic firms will attend the event to meet potential investors.

As I have noted before, readers want to know more about ARENDI, the CdTe/CdS start up building a 15 MW per year production line in Milan, Italy. I had not found a website for ARENDI until my search today uncovered this Italian article, Moduli a Film sottile by Sandro Kensan, with a golden link to the Solar System and Equipments website, ARENDI by another name. I suggest reading or translating both the English and Italiano to extract the most information.

This naming idea no doubt originated from ARENDI’s University of Verona colleagues?

From Russia with Polysilicon

Russian program "Silicon" (Silicon Program) projects slated to produce semiconductor and solar grade silicon

When I was searching around YouTube for my own videos earlier this month, I noticed this video with the tag polysilicon:

I have managed to connect this video to the SiPro Silicon Program in Russia (English, Russian). The video appears to show the SSP Project or Semi-conductor silicon plant located about 10 kilometers from Zheleznogorsk in the Krasnoyarsk region of Russia.

This program may not be news to everyone. Two SiFoRUms have been held the past two years in Moscow to promote the Investment and Industrial Potential of Russian Polysilicon Production for Solar Energy.

Spearheaded and run by the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency, the Silicon Program’s stated goal is to create a high tech manufacturing industry leveraging skilled workers displaced from nuclear weapons and spacecraft development, cheap electric power, and local resources and infrastructure.

On January 1, 2006, the SSP Project was financed with $120 Million (USD) to build out 1000 metric tons per year of solar grade polycrystalline silicon production capacity. A significant portion of this investment creates infrastructure for capacity expansion to 4000 metric tons of polycrystalline silicon per year as part of the Solarius Project. This project ensures NITOL Group investments in the expansion of trichlorosilane production by the joint stock company Usoliechimprom to support the Silicon Program.

The Silicon Program has a US based consulting arm called Solarius Technologies, LLC providing consulting services for the design and construction of semi-conductor quality and solar grade polysilicon production facilities based on their modernized trichlorsilane technology.

I contacted the Silicon Program and Solarius Technologies to obtain an update on the status of the SSP and Solarius Projects, but I didn’t want to wait for a reply before posting this.

And speaking of silicon, most of my future posts will be from what I call the Silicon Valley Bureau of GUNTHER Portfolio although the headquarters remains in New Jersey.