Solar Power Fabric with Pvilion’s Colin Touhey

This is Textron tv. I'm Bonnie Schneider. Today we're exploring a revolutionary approach in the realm of renewable energy and sustainable technology, solar powered fabrics.

It's a concept that's transforming everyday surfaces into electricity generating entities. Joining me now on Techstrong TV is Colin Tuy, co-founder and CEO of Pavilion, at the forefront of integrating solar technology with textiles, pavilion's diverse range of products is changing how we think about and use solar power in our daily lives. Colin, it's great to have you here.

Thank you so much for having me, Bonnie. This is a pleasure. Thanks.

Can you share more about, uh, your background and your journey to co-founding pavilion? Yeah, absolutely. So I studied electrical engineering, uh, got my bachelor's of science in electrical engineering and was really focused on energy generation, in particular renewable energy generation.

So kind of trying to answer the question of how we can harness energy out of different modes of transportation after kinetics, after all sorts of different, uh, methodologies. And I, uh, partnered up with, uh, couple folks who I actually worked for. Um, their names are Todd Dand and Robert Lerner.

And their background is in the tent industry. So they're architects that have a focus on structural engineering and tent design. And they had been, uh, moving into this energy generation using tents and photovoltaic integration into fabrics.

And I said, wait a minute. This is so cool. Uh, do you have electrical engineering expertise?

Do you have engineering expertise? And effectively they said, no, we'd love to have you as part of the kind of engineering team. And so the three of us, uh, spun off our company pavilion in 2011 to really focus on focus integrating these solar cells into fabrics to utilize any surface to generate electricity.

It's so interesting and I I think you need to break it down. So how does it work this, this approach with integrating solar cells with fabric and how does, um, it, how does, how is it effective and, and creating the energy, if you don't mind, but our audience is very technical, so feel free to, to get a little geeky on us on That. Well, in some ways it's relatively simple in that the, the solar cell that generates electricity, unfortunately, I don't have one here at my desk, um, but the solar cell that generates electricity is very thin and many of them are flexible.

Um, so typically what you do is you take that solar cell, and that's a really thin, lightweight piece of material, and you'd laminated it into two big, heavy pieces of glass for safety and security. And then you put a big metal frame around it, and that's what you see a solar panel, right? You put it on your roof, you put it in a field, you come up with all sorts of applications.

You know, the general philosophy that we have is, let's take that solar cell, maybe it's the same solar cell, maybe it's a different solar cell, but fundamentally it's a material that generates electricity when the sun hits it. And rather than laminating it in between two big pieces of glass, let's laminated it into multiple layers of more thinner, flexible materials, including and not limited to fabrics. So the focus is anytime we do that with fabric, we can now turn a fabric product, which is now the baseline of that material that we create into an energy generating surface.

So it's a little bit like a sandwich, um, a composite, if you will. And one of those materials is fabric, that's a requirement of ours. And the other, another one of the materials is a solar cell that generates electricity.

So as long as you have those two, uh, then we're okay working with it. Can you describe one of pavilion's products that you're particularly proud of and how it showcases the potential for solar textiles? Yeah.

One of our biggest products is called the Spiz, or the solar powered integrated structure. Effectively what it is, is it's a fully contained, uh, solar powered tent system. So that has a tent, which is a shelter you can sleep and live and operate out of.

It has solar cells integrated into the roof. It has a battery system for energy storage at night, and in, uh, bad weather conditions. It has an integrated inverter to convert the DC to AC and AC to dc It has lighting, air conditioning, heating desks, chairs, beds.

Um, so again, spiz, which is the solar powered integrated structure, is a fully self-contained, uh, think of it as a pop-up tent that you could live in for a long period of time. It sounds like you have a, a diverse range of applications, uh, military tents, you mentioned even clothing. So how do you tailor the solar fabric technology to meet the different needs?

And I was wondering if also you can give an example of, of a case scenario where this really was a lifesaver for someone to have, um, the, the solar powered, let's say, clothing for example, maybe in a way that they weren't planning to use it, but it really came in handy. Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, as far as how we tailor it, uh, a good example is working with the military versus working with a consumer, right?

So in many ways, they're the same. People are gonna step on it, they're gonna break it, they're gonna complain about it when it breaks, um, they're gonna try to return it. Um, and, uh, what we like to do is we create perhaps a more durable, long lasting product for the military.

Um, and then we create kind of like a more user friendly version for the consumer. And, you know, that also has to do with supply chain. Maybe we're getting some materials overseas for consumers, whereas most is gonna be domestically made for the military.

Um, but fundamentally the technology is the same. It's just going to be integrated. Uh, a good example of something we focus on with, with, uh, some of our military applications is, you know, we think, oh, lightweight, portable, flexible.

Um, so a lot of our military customers said, you know, we don't really need it to be flexible. We need to be able to step on it and have it not break. So if something's flexible, an 18-year-old is just gonna try to bend it and snap it.

So let's actually make it less flexible, and, which is kind of against our DNA since we're fabric people. But, uh, you know, it's kind of a lesson in working with different customers. And as far as you know, one application that we're particularly proud of, we just sent a few hundred of our kits to Ukraine to work, uh, that's great in the US Embassy buildings and compounds.

So effectively utilizing our solar technology with batteries to, uh, prevent, or sorry, help in emergencies when there's grid outages due to bombings. Wow. That is, it must be very fulfilling work to know that you're, uh, helping in such a broad way.

Um, can you talk about some of the challenges that you've encountered in developing and commercializing solar textiles and how you've addressed them? Yeah. I'd say one challenge, and this is sort of a, you know, a business product item is thinking of ourselves as purely a solar powered fabric company limits us in some ways.

And what we've really done is we've, we've been more recently providing solutions. So if a customer says, oh, well, I wanna use solar powered fabric to power air conditioning, uh, we say, we used to say, oh, great, well, you know, here's a wire power, whatever you want with it. But what we've learned is that we really need to create sort of self-contained problem solving products for the customer.

So they want to use our solar powered fabric to power lights. Well, why don't we provide the lights so that we know they're good lights, we know that they're reliable, and we know that our p our solar panels are actually gonna power those lights. Um, so I think it's, it's been a lesson in sort of kidding out elements and really being fully integrated into our product, family, Family.

So, uh, what are some of the new applications and advancements that you're excited about for pavilion? Yeah, one of the new advancements that we're really excited about is integrating new films and coatings that are going to hide the solar cells. So when we work in certain applications, there's two main categories.

There's a military where they don't wanna be seen, and that includes visual, but it also includes thermal, thermal and infrared signatures that we wanna actually reduce so that the solar panels are effectively invisible. Um, and then aesthetically, there are a lot of folks who pick our panels and our products because they're architecturally interesting, and they don't really necessarily want black squares on the top of their tent. And we're, we're really trying to hide those.

So I think one thing that you're gonna see pretty soon is solar panels that you don't even know are there. That is. Cool.

Uh, we talked a little bit about some of the global work that you're doing. So you're obviously having a big impact, but how do you seek pavilion's role in, in the broader movement towards clean technology and sustainability? Well, one key element that we see is we are not competitors to a rooftop solar installation on your house.

But generally speaking, uh, if you are replacing grid power with solar power, the grid isn't too bad. You know, it, it, we're generally using natural gas in this country. Sometimes you're using renewable sources.

Um, so the replacement of, uh, typical grid power solar is gonna help. There's no question. But really the majority of the applications that we're trying to help are actually replacing generator power.

And when you look at the emissions and the, uh, the, the carbon needs of a, uh, a diesel generator, it's tremendous. So what we're really trying to do is to offset, uh, an immense amount of pollution and carbon emissions from generator usage, not necessarily grid usage. And, you know, when you look at, uh, small Honda generator operating 24 7, you know, that's the equivalent of an F-150 driving around 24 7, and you say, let's power this application by solar and batteries.

Instead, we're taking a lot of emissions outta the air. And, and that's really something we're proud of, is to eliminate that generator emissions. That's great.

Well, finally, our audience, um, tech-minded folks that some of them maybe have a big idea and they might be looking to, uh, be an entrepreneur in the clean technology area, or maybe they just wanna get involved with, uh, someone else's idea in clean tech and, and renewable energy. So what would your advice be to, uh, technically minded individuals that do want to see their work move into this, uh, transition o of renewable energy and clean tech? I'd say two things.

One is be patient. Uh, and then the other is find a product or tailor a product that customers want and are willing to pay for. Uh, don't just have a good idea and convince everyone you know that it's a good idea.

Really look to, to customers who actually have that market demand. Don't just come up with a good idea and then try to sell it. Come up with a good idea and then tailor it for the market who has that pull or that demand.

That's great advice. Well, thank you so much, Colin Toy Co-founder and CEO of Pavilion for joining us today on Techstrong tv. We appreciate your insights and, and of course the innovations on solar powered fabric and its role in advancing clean technology.

Thanks so much, Bonnie. We really appreciate it. Great.

Well stay with us on Techstrong tv. We'll have more interviews coming up.