In this Issue: Entech Tubular Skylight on the Market Update on Entech’s Concentrating Photovoltaic Technology Entech Launches Engineering Services Entech’s Earth Week Event Entech Tubular Skylight on the Market Product Well Received In Green Building Market After January Launch Daylight is by far the best light source. It’s free, sustainable and increases wellbeing and performance. By making the most of the light that is available, you are likely to achieve energy savings and create a more comfortable and healthy environment. Daylight is a valuable resource available for free during the bulk of business hours. Using daylight minimizes environmental impacts, as it does not require electricity generation, and it does not produce greenhouse gas emissions. Lighting the spaces around the external perimeter of your building is easy using conventional windows. But what about those deep interior spaces of your building, far from windows and without access to daylight? These spaces are often lit by florescent lights, which can flicker, alter colors, and generally make spaces less desirable. In commercial buildings, these rooms are typically lit by electric lights all day long, even when there is bright, pleasant daylight just overhead. But how can this daylight be delivered to spaces without windows, especially when ceilings prevent the use of conventional skylights? Roof Dome/Skylight The Entech™ Tubular Skylight (ETS) harvests natural daylight at the roof, and delivers that daylight to these interior spaces, providing a clean, sustainable light source without using any electricity at all! The ETS features the patented Solar Collimator, a technological innovation that ensures the light delivered to the room is consistent and predictable all day long, on every sunny day of the year. David Gelbaum Becomes New CEO of Entech “I am excited about having a more active role in day to day operations of Entech Solar that has developed state of the art solar technologies and now turning those technologies into very attractive green products like our skylight that can provide users natural lighting directly from the sun. We are very excited about our state-of-the-art concentrating photovoltaic products that can provide electricity in the short term and potentially both electricity and heat in the long term.” Entech’s New CFO Excited about Role Chas Michel, Entech’s New Chief Financial Officer, is pleased to be on board with a company developing products for a better future. “I have had a wealth of experience in both public and private companies but I am excited about working with such advanced products and a professional team that will improve our future while providing a sustainable business model.” Daylit Conference Room Entech Solar’s expertise in solar optics has been developed over nearly 30 years, and the company’s work on concentrating photovoltaic systems provided the engineers at Entech Solar the deep understanding of sunlight and optics that led to the many innovations found in the ETS. Beginning at the rooftop dome, Entech Solar’s innovative thinking has produced a unique wedge-shaped form, with angles carefully calculated to capture as much sunlight as possible throughout the year. The patented Solar Collimator™ was developed to improve the transmission efficiency and quality of light over conventional tubular skylights. The unique geometry of the Solar Collimator actually straightens out the light, reducing the number of energy-reducing bounces and ensuring that daylight is delivered with amazing consistency, providing the most predictable daylighting possible. The Entech Tubular Skylight was launched in January 2010, and Entech is currently looking for distribution in several markets. Earlier this month, Bartos Industries, of Dallas/Fort Worth, became the first ETS distributor. Bartos Industries is a well known and respected manufacturers’ representative calling on architects, engineers, and contractors throughout the DFW region. Cutaway of ETS Units Over Conference Room Comparison of Collimating Vs Conventional Skylights Update on Entech Solar’s Newest Concentrating Photovoltaic (CPV) Technology Fixed Mini-Modules under Glass (FMMG) Provides Avenue for Significant Cost Reductions in Competitive Market Background The Entech Solar team has been involved in the research, development, field testing, and commercialization of CPV technology for both ground and space applications for more than three decades. For example, Fig. 1 below shows one of our CPV systems deployed in the mid-1990’s. After the merger of ENTECH, Inc., and WorldWater and Solar Technologies Corporation to form Entech Solar in January 2008, we had originally planned to commercialize CPV systems based heavily on the design shown in Fig. 1. The basic CPV module was a very large unit, over 3 square meters in aperture area, with a 3 mm thick arched acrylic lens over the front of the module. The cost of these CPV modules in the early 2008 timeframe was very competitive with the one-sun photovoltaic technologies that dominate the world market and represent our biggest competition. Figure 1. 100 kW CPV System in West Texas However, photovoltaic market conditions changed radically during 2008 and early 2009, due in part to the global economic crisis and in part to the emergence of Chinese one-sun photovoltaic module makers as low-cost leaders in the industry. Over the past two years, one-sun module prices per Watt of power delivered have fallen by about 50%, from about $3.50 per Watt to about $1.75 per Watt. When Entech Solar’s management saw these rapidly plummeting module prices, we were forced to abandon the less cost effective large CPV modules of the past and move forward with our more cost-effective next-generation CPV modules of the future. These new CPV modules are firmly based on the field-proven heritage of our previous generations of CPV modules and systems. Figure 2. Mini-Module Prototype. Our many generations of CPV technology have all relied on a robust and efficient primary optical concentrator based on the symmetrical-refraction Fresnel lens design principle. For line-focus applications, the symmetrical-refraction lens is a cylindrical arched-shaped unit as shown in Fig. 2. For space applications, we have used multijunction cells in the focus of our lenses, including triple-junction cells under our cylindrical lenses in the SCARLET array that performed flawlessly on NASA’s Deep Space 1 mission in 1998-2001. For terrestrial applications, we have continually used lower cost silicon cells in the focus of our line-focus lenses. Conventional one-sun silicon cell processing methods are readily adaptable to produce efficient and low cost cells for our terrestrial CPV modules operating in the 20X geometric concentration ratio region. We use another optical device, the prismatic cell cover, to eliminate the gridline shadowing loss for heavily metalized concentrator cells in our CPV modules. In the past, our space CPV modules have been much smaller than our terrestrial CPV modules, to save launch weight and cost for the former. Indeed, our latest space CPV arrays are extremely light, offering unprecedented performance and weight metrics. For our latest terrestrial CPV offering, we have now adapted much of our material-efficient space technology to our new FMMG technology. Fixed Mini-Modules under Glass (FMMG) Technology Fig. 3 shows our new FMMG panel. The size, shape, and form factor are very similar to conventional one-sun silicon-cell modules which dominate the current PV market. Note that the new panel uses 6 side-by-side mini-modules (similar to the prototype shown in Fig. 2) under a single piece of AR-coated tempered solar glass, with an aluminum sheet metal box enclosure providing the panel structure and the convective and radiative back surface for dissipating waste heat to the environment. Our product name for the new FMMG CPV module is SolarVolt™, and its target market is large-scale electrical power generation. Compared to our previous generations of terrestrial CPV technology, FMMG offers substantial benefits in weight, volume, manufacturing scalability, durability, and cost effectiveness. We plan to begin independent certification testing of SolarVolt™ during the summer of 2010, and we hope to have a certified product ready for commercialization in early 2011 to address the rapidly growing photovoltaic market shown in Fig. 4. This new Entech Solar product is protected by both issued and pending patents. Figure 3. Fixed Mini-Modules Under Glass (FMMG) Panel Figure 4. Worldwide Photovoltaic Module Sales (Source: European Photovoltaic Industries Association) Changing market conditions have also led Entech Solar to select our new SolarVolt™ CPV module as the company’s top priority in our concentrating photovoltaic power products business. Depending on market conditions, we may follow SolarVolt™ with a new and improved version of ThermaVolt™, our combined heat and power product. Engineering Services Utilizes Company’s Extensive Solar Systems Design Background Entech Solar completed the design, engineering and installation of over 13 megawatts of commercial solar projects. This extensive experience allows Entech to provide the following expertise to solar project developers, designers, investors and owners: project design and development, financial modeling, project management, installation and construction, as well as knowledge of the market, solar industry and solar hardware. This broad expertise can help reduce the customer's solar system costs and improve the customer's return on investment (ROI). Entech has recently been very active in signing up and working on the design of a variety of solar projects. This additional revenue resource for the company is expected to grow substantially in the near term. Ross Perot Jr. Addresses Audience About Importance of Green Jobs Jim Lowell, ETS Product and Channel Manager, Describes ETS Cutaway Demo Entech’s Earth Week Event Provided Great Visibility of Entech’s Products to User Community Entech Solar hosted an Earth Week event at their corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility in the Alliance Texas business park in north Fort Worth on April 21, 2010. This event was co-hosted by Hillwood, a Perot Company. The Open House featured a “Green Jobs and Green Business in Fort Worth” theme, with Entech Solar Chairman and CEO David Gelbaum, Hillwood CEO Ross Perot, Jr. and Danny Scarth, Mayor Pro Tem, City of Fort Worth (District 4) all speaking about Entech Solar as an example of how green jobs and green businesses are being created in the local area. Entech Solar also announced participation in Northwest Independent School District’s “Partners in Education” program, designed to better integrate local business with the school district. Dr. Karen Rue, Superintendent of NWISD and Jeannette Leong, NWISD Board of Trustees President, were also on hand to welcome Entech Solar to the partnership program as well as present Mr. Gelbaum with a plaque acknowledging the partnership. Tours of the facility and reviews of Entech Solar’s products followed. Along with personnel from Hillwood and NWISD, this event was attended by architects, engineers, building owners and building developers to acquaint them with Entech’s products. In addition, NWISD selected a class of students from Pike Middle School and their teacher to attend the event. The event was attended by 68 invited guests, 11 Hillwood personnel, 28 NWISD students and 28 Entech employees.   David Gelbaum Welcomes Guests to Entech Earth Week Event Entech Solar, Inc. | 13301 Park Vista Blvd., Suite 100 | Fort Worth | Texas | 76177