FTL and Ascent Enter into Solar Fabric Agreement, Solar Sails Expected to Sail into Distribution Channels

Solar sailboat sails will be distributed through FTL Solar (Austin, Texas) as a result of an agreement with Ascent Solar Technologies (NASDAQ:ASTI, Thornton, Colorado), a producer of flexible solar cell technology. As part of the agreement, Ascent Solar will supply $6.5 million of its lightweight photovoltaic modules to FTLSolar over the next three years. In turn, FTL will embed these cells into a variety of structures. According to FTL Solar CEO, Tony Saxton, FTL Solar is now a “U.S. distributor for Ascent’s light weight photovoltaic (PV) modules for fabric awnings, airbeams, tents, tensile structures, sailboat sails, tarps and umbrellas.”

The merging of the two companies’ solar and structural textile technologies is expected to open up new markets for the fabric structure industry. Besides being able to offer fold-up tents and pavilions for concerts, festivals and campers, fabric structure companies will also be able to offer electrical energy, a much needed commodity in the outdoor market.
FTL Solar presently offers standard and custom-built solar fabric structures. These include fold-up festival tents that come complete with embedded solar cells. Just unfold it and set-up your power station.

These solar festival tents, although a little bit heavier than all-cotton canvas tents, give festival vendors a lot of electrical power. In fact, for just 10 square yards of solar fabric, which weighs about 50 pounds, you get around 1000 watt-hours per day, which is enough to power to keep a 14 cubic foot freezer ice cold all day, even when it’s a scorching 90 degrees outside.
At this time, Ascent Solar is ramping up its solar cell manufacturing facility. That facility, which is expected to reach full capacity by the end of 2010, will produce enough solar cells every year to generate over 30 million watts of electricity. Or if you like to think in freezers, enough power for over 100,000 14 cubic foot freezers.

For the boating world, this solar technology means a lot. Not only will it usher in a new era in boat design and boat comfort, but it also offers marine transportation companies a way to lower energy costs. Companies such as Solar Sailor (Sydney Australia) report that their solar sail technology dramatically reduces boating fuel costs.
Whether or not solar sail solutions from FTL and Ascent will be more energy efficient is an open question. The other open question is whether solar sails have the ability to catch the wind just like all-cotton sails. The solar fabric structures that FTL builds look as though they could catch the wind, but one has to wonder how much wind energy these solar sails can catch and how easy these sails would be to maneuver in a heavy wind.

New technology holds the promise that solar fabric, more like plastic now, will become more like real cotton fabric in the future. And this will make possible solar sails that can not only catch the sun but the wind also.