Home-grown quest to make “silver-free” and ultra-low cost solar wins another $25m in federal funding

One of Australia’s biggest domestic solar manufacturing hopes, SunDrive, has won another $25 million in federal government funding to scale and commercialise its copper-based PV technology and edge closer to the goal of ultra-low cost solar.

The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (Arena) said on Tuesday that it has awarded the New South Wales based SunDrive up to $25.3 million in new funding as part of the government’s Advancing Renewables Program.

Arena says the new investment – the second from the agency – will support SunDrive’s collaboration with manufacturers Maxwell and Vistar to take its technology from the research and development stage at its Kurnell facility to a 300 megawatt (MW) commercial scale.

Spun out of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and backed by high profile investors including Mike Cannon-Brookes, SunDrive is developing a technology that uses copper for solar cell metallisation, instead of silver.

The company says that swapping in copper – which is around one hundred times cheaper and one thousand times more abundant than silver – could deliver an installed cost of solar that is 20-30% cheaper than other high-efficiency competitors.

In December last year, SunDrive notched up an important milestone by demonstrating that more than 99 per cent of the solar cells produced at its pilot facility in Sydney can meet and beat commercial standards.

The achievement also checked off one of the key funding criteria of the $14 million Arena grant that was awarded to SunDrive in late 2023.

Arena is also in charge of deciding which company’s and projects will get a share of federal Labor’s $1 billion Solar Sunshot program, a key plank of the Albanese government’s Future Made in Australia policy.

SunDrive in 2024 applied for a share in the first round of Sunshot funding in partnership with Chinese PV giant Trina Solar, putting forward a proposal to set up a module manufacturing plant in Western Sydney, with an initial production capacity of 1.2 gigawatts (GW).

At this stage, SunDrive has not been named among the recipients of that particular funding pool, which have included fellow Australian solar trailblazers 5B and Tindo Solar. Arena is yet to allocate all of the $550 million that was on offer.

Nevertheless, SunDrive CEO Natalie Malligan says the new chunk of Advancing Renewables funding serves as a “strong validation” of the company’s strategy to develop world-class solar innovation in Australia and partner with industry leaders to industrialise it.

“It shows how Australian innovation can compete globally, and how with the right support, we can take homegrown technology to the world,” Milligan said in a statement on Tuesday.

Arena and SunDrive say the up to $25.3 million will support the ongoing upgrade of the Kurnell facility, including refinement of production tools to further advance the technology.

The money will also be used to produce modules at the Kurnell facility for in-field testing and early market acceptance, to accelerate the adoption of copper-based solar cells and generate new licensing revenue streams for SunDrive.

“This next phase builds on that success and represents the culmination of our work to translate our copper plating technology into the industrial tools that will define the next generation of solar cell technology,” said SunDrive co-founder Vince Allen.

“With silver prices nearly tripling in three years and solar now using a third of global industrial silver, the industry urgently needs a silver-free alternative.

“With Arena’s support and our partners’ expertise, this project intends to deliver a scalable mass-production solution,” Allen says.

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