Solar Cells
Inspired by a vacation in sunny Arizona, McMaster began another company, Glasstech Solar, in 1984, to produce cost-effective solar arrays. His insight was that the essential cost element of large area solar arrays was glass, and he could treat the actual solar cell as simply a different kind of coating on glass. After doing little except absorbing $12 million cash, McMaster gave up on the amorphous silicon research, offered to pay back the 57 investors who followed him into solar cells. He then raised yet another $15 million to create Solar Cells Inc., to work on a different thin-film technology, cadmium telluride. By 1997, Solar Cells had a prototype production machine. In 1995, he brought in a new president, and bought still more stock in the company to fund research, although the company had yet to pay a dividend. According to Ken Zweibel, former head of the Thin Film Partnership program at the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, SCI was clearly the industry leader in thin-film photovoltaic technology. In 1999, True North Partners, LLC purchased controlling interest, and renamed the company First Solar LLC.
According to his obituary in the local paper, the Toledo Blade, "Some believe he will be remembered as the "father" of commercial-scale solar energy, having practically handed the needed technology to society on a platter in the 1990s."
Read more about this topic: Harold Mc Master
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