Bill Nye-backed startup is using particle accelerator tech to make solar power accessible

After hitting more than $7 million in reservations as part of a Reg A+ equity crowdfunding campaign and getting a stamp of approval from celebrity scientist Bill Nye, Santa Monica-based solar company Rayton Solar has some big plans for the future.

Its goal? Using particle accelerator technology to bring down the cost of solar panel manufacturing and hasten a transition of world energy usage to more of a reliance on solar installations.

It’s a tall order, to be sure. But founder Andrew Yakub has felt like the clock has been ticking for a while now, and he’s been thinking about this since Rayton’s founding in 2012 back when he was a design engineer at the UCLA Particle Beam Physics Laboratory.

In addition to that, he also had a solar installation company that depended on a federal grant program which was set to soon expire. Yakub saw there needed to be a better and lower cost way of installing solar.

What Rayton does, in short, is use float-zone silicon — the highest grade available, and also used by NASA. The company’s method involves use of a particular accelerator to produce extremely small silicon wafers, a process that Rayton says cuts the cost to manufacture solar panels by more than 60 percent. And it also creates panels that are 25 percent more efficient, the company says. Read more…