Episode 104: Solar panels you can print, roll, and deploy
September 25, 2025 at 4:56:51 PM
Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head-on. I'm Molly Wood.
This week we are still reimagining how we generate, deliver, and access energy. And today we’re going to look at an innovation on a tech you might have thought was solved
to answer the question what would it take to put solar panels like everywhere? Here we go.
Anthony
Hi, Molly. It's lovely to be with you today. My name is Anthony and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Kardinia Energy. And what we make is next generation solar technology. And what this is, is basically printed solar. So very lightweight, fully recyclable solar technology that has no reliance on traditional solar supply chains.
Molly Wood
Amazing. I want to start with next generation solar because I think that, you know, solar technology is a kind of something I think that people think of as generally solved to the lay person, not people in this industry, but the lay person things like we totally know how to do this. Maybe we're trying to tweak efficiency here and there. You know, what inspired you to come along and say, actually, I want to reinvent the idea of a solar product and make it nothing like.
what you might have in your head if you're listening to this right now.
Anthony
Yeah, no thanks. think that with all technologies, there is a development, an evolution of those technologies. And we often believe at that point, what we have is good enough, is sufficient for what we're doing. My co-founder, Professor Paul Dastoor, has been working on printed solar for 30 years. So he's been looking at problems. We have amazing silicon solar technology, and we're not looking to replace that. We need more.
as we all know. But what Paul has looked at for 30 years is the fact that actually we need to also build fully sustainable solar energy technologies. We need to build things that are, as we would describe, the perfect reflection of solar, of energy generation in the circular economy. And that's the nature of this technology being completely different materials. There is no silicon being used in that.
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Anthony
in this. So it's a completely different way of looking at solar energy and the deployment of which, not least on the type of technology it is, but also where we deploy it and how we use it and how we think about energy generation, not just solar, but energy generation in its core.
Molly Wood
Yeah. So much to play with and dig into here. Let's spend a minute on the differences for people who don't know how traditional solar panels, let's call them, are made compared to what you're describing, which is really straight up 3D printed, right?
Anthony
Mm-hmm.
Anthony
Yeah, so quite correct. The first thing we look at is a silicon solar panel can be 15 or 20 kilos in weight, so they can be quite heavy. They're rigid, as we all know, so they can't be moved around different structures. And the method in which we make those solar panels is considerably different to what we do. And I don't want to go into too much detail there, but I think we all know the environmental impact of the development.
of solar technologies as it stands. But this is very different. So instead of being 15 or 20 kilos, printed solar weighs 300 grams.
Molly Wood
per, for what size? Remind us. Per square meter, wow. Wow. So it's really like a sheet, like a sheet of paper kind of, not paper, but yeah. Okay.
Anthony
per square meter, like it's nothing. It's nothing. So it's time.
It is like a sheet of plastic, quite ultimately. No different to, as I could say, a laminated concert poster, for example. It uses 98 % less materials. So the weight is completely different. The usage is completely different. And that opens up entirely different avenues for us as well. So we look at solar energy from a completely different perspective.
Molly Wood
Yeah. Wow.
Anthony
So if we work through that, well, what's the difference in the weight? What's the difference in the usage, the lifetime and all of those things? Just as you fly into wherever you go and into California, fly into San Francisco or where it might be, and you look to the left or the right and you see those enormous areas of industrial roofs that don't have solar panels on them. You know why that is people think they should be on. They should be on those roofs. They can't take the weight. Often they can't take the weight. If you think of
Molly Wood
I don't... and that...
Anthony
one solar panel being 50 or 20 kilos, put it on the entire roof. So then to be able to do that, you may be spending millions of dollars on the infrastructure to keep that roof up, to put all of that weight of the solar panel on. Now factor all of that into the cost of that solar energy. Then it becomes a really expensive proposition. And also,
Molly Wood
It's so funny too, when you say that it absolutely blows my mind. I did, I would, bet that I and everybody else would be say, it's regulations or they just don't want to. Like I never thought about weight as the limiting factor.
Anthony
Yeah. Well, it's absolutely one of the key ones. And so when these things are so expensive, then we need a lifetime of 10, 15 years to get our money back of the whole cost of this project. But then let's flip it on its head. Let's go a completely different route, which is what we've done. We're not chasing efficiency. We're not chasing the 15 to 20 % efficiency. We don't need to. Right? We can use that space. We need, essentially,
three to four times more space than what a standard silicon solar panel needs. But it's so lightweight, we can just roll it out over these vast areas, but on lightweight structures. And because it's essentially cheaper to manufacture, cheaper to make, lightweight, we don't need all of that other infrastructure, we actually build the product to last about five years. That's it. Because what we'll do is we'll go on to that.
we'll take it off and we'll put the next generation of printed solar on that roof. Just like you and your mobile phone, I bet you may not have an iPhone 1 now. You've probably got an iPhone 14, 15, because we change every few years. And that's the same with printed solar. The nature of the inks means we will continue to develop higher efficiencies, next generation products and take it off your roof. But what we will also do when we take it off is we will fully recycle it in-house.
Molly Wood
Right.
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Anthony
that everything we do, we already do that. We recycle entire technology and apps. It's a very, very different way of thinking of solar energy, but then take it step further. Well, actually, if it doesn't need to be on a lightweight roof, where else can we put a solar panel to generate energy where there is no energy being generated? And that starts to change the real dynamic here. And it opens up unbelievable opportunities for deploying
Molly Wood
Right.
Anthony
and garnering and generating solar energy.
Molly Wood
I definitely want to geek out on some of the possible opportunities. Talk to us about, actually, before I ask you for some examples, let's sort of stay on the origin story for a minute. You said that your co-founder has been working on this for 30 years. What was the unlock that got this from kind of, know, lab idea, mad scientist idea to now you are actually deploying in ways that we're going to talk about?
Anthony
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and Professor Paul is absolutely a mad scientist. He's not. He's a fantastic man to work with. But also, he's been solving, he's been looking at this challenge from the perspective of cost, not from the perspective of how do I get the highest efficiencies? Because he's looked at this entire thing from a commercial proposition, not least the technology side. And so,
Molly Wood
I'm so glad I would hate to offend him.
Anthony
What he has actually built is what we call the entire blockchain of the technology. So not just, he's not just, you know, put some inks in a test tube and it's, you know, generating energy. He's gone through the entire process from cradle to grave of this opportunity. So he's made the inks, we make the inks in-house. We print ourselves, we recycle ourselves.
And doing all of those things, actually takes time. It takes that ongoing validation and development. So since about 2018, we've then started to go to larger scale pilot demonstrations. And again, we've gone about this a different way. So rather than just having a publication that says, hey, guess what? We're at 25%. We're at 30 % efficiencies. We're saying, hey, look, we've done
the largest ever deployment of this type of technology. So we've gone for the scale and then we will build on the deployments. So I would say the major one was probably in around 2018, the first deployment on a commercial roof.
Molly Wood
maybe break down for us. You've mentioned efficiency a couple of times and let's just like make that as clear as we can, because this is sort of, you know, you've taken, you've, you've kind of, you've done my favorite thing, which is sort of think differently about the solar energy generation question entirely, because most of the conversations about solar and the technologies related to it seem to be designed to make existing types of panels or
you know, maybe different versions of panels more efficient as in more efficiently harvest the sun's energy and turn it into electricity. I know somebody's gonna say like, you don't turn it into, but you know what I mean, generate more, generate more energy.
Anthony
Yeah, no, no, no, I'm not the scientist. I taught layman as well. We're in the same place. But yeah, absolutely.
Molly Wood
Totally. maybe like, yeah. So break down that debate for us and then how important it is to say like, we're just gonna sidestep that completely and go for volume.
Anthony
Yeah, and this is a really interesting thing. This is the nub of the questions and the challenge that we have. And largely from it's a lot of solar experts that tell us you need to be at X efficiency because it's what we used to what we're indoctrinated to think about. Right. Because essentially, I know that the silicon solar world won't be happy with this comment, but a lot of them are largely the same, similar weight, similar size, similar, similar spectrum of how it can generate energy. And what we're saying is, well,
Molly Wood
Yeah.
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Anthony
There are different parts of the equation that we can look at, not just efficiency times durability equals return on the investment, but a lot of other areas such as, what's the cost? How can we roll this out further? How can we deploy it on different avenues and different areas? And the best way I describe that is when we talk about efficiency, it's like a fire truck. It's like having a big, powerful hose that fires out a lot of water at that one point. That's great.
That's fantastic. That's what we think about as efficiency. Great. No problem with that. But what about if we could use 50 smaller hoses? We'll still fill the bucket at the same rate at the same time. We just need more hoses and we just cover the roof. Right. So the point is not about what's the efficiency. It's about, well, how much space do I need to create the same amount of energy? And that's why the nuance is very different for us. And that's why we're looking at areas with space.
with vast space that we can put it where we're light-footed on that area. It doesn't mean to we can't complement existing solar arrays. So if 40 % of the roof is covered and then that's starting to hit the weight limitations, we can do the other 60%. It's just changing that narrative and adding a few other different variables to the one formula that we're to. And some people get it straight away. They say, you know what? I understand. We just need more space. That's the principle being.
And that's really where we're starting to, we have the space. In Australia alone, there's a hundred million square meters of industrial roof where the sun is just bouncing off and that's Australia. That's a lot of sunlight. Well, not today, but that's normally a lot of sunlight. And so that's four gigawatts of capacity just hitting our roofs. So then let's take that conversation further. Let's think about that opportunity.
Molly Wood
And we have the space. We have the space.
Anthony
Where could we put it? Where can we put this technology where we can't normally go? And that changes the angle. That's why we try not to just say we're at X efficiency. Because again, with this technology, it's very different. It works. It works comparatively better in lower light environments or in shade or in cloudy days. So then in the shoulder of those kind of bell curves that we always see,
Molly Wood
And that's where things get dishy.
Anthony
those shoulders early in the morning, late in the evening, this technology works up to 25 % better. If you take that conversation further and you say, well, actually, therefore, perhaps I can also cover the shaded part of my roof, not just the sunny side of the roof where the sun hits directly. And I can cover the walls as well. And when you start thinking about it as the what's the return on my investment, and it's hard to kind of visualize this, I hope I'm making a point, but
On the sunny side of that roof, if that technology is on for five years, and because it's generating energy so quickly, the return on your investment could be a year. On the shaded side of your roof, the return on your investment could be two years or three years, but it's still generating energy. You're still getting a positive return. And if it's on the walls and it's three and a half years, again, you're still getting a positive return from that investment. So that's where we take the conversation to.
Molly Wood
Right. So.
Molly Wood
is like be able to be and that and I want to, you know, I'm repeating what you've said a little bit. By the way, if you see our video breaking up at all, don't worry because you're being recorded locally. So when we upload, it will look perfect. Yeah. So I'm circling back to what you said earlier, but you really made the point that you're thinking about this in terms of energy generation. And so I just am going to sort of repeat back what you're saying, which is that this is an opportunity to be generating
Anthony
That's financing.
Okay.
Molly Wood
clean, renewable energy in places that previously you would not have thought possible.
Anthony
Absolutely. Yeah.
Molly Wood
It's pure additionality, like they say. Yep, yep.
Anthony
Correct. Correct. There's so much space out there that we could be deploying clean energy.
Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about some of the use cases that are actually happening and look, I don’t know if Kardinia’s tech was helping to power the Coldplay concert where the infamous affair outing happened I only know it could have been
Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We’re talking with Anthony Letmon of Kardinia Energy
Molly Wood
So let's talk about deploying because you have had some high profile deployments. You must be having a lot of fun these days specifically talking about your Coldplay partnership. Little did you know that would be an even bigger news story.
Anthony
Yeah.
Anthony
But when we, when we, when Paul and I started this business, I think pretty much about four years ago, you don't know what you, you don't know what you're starting. You think you do, you have ideas as a startup, you think you know where the journey is going to take you, but ultimately you don't. And the inbound interest that we've had has been staggering, frightening as well. There's staggering. There's all walks of life.
I'll bring out an example just as we build up to that. We get the, example, the man in Sri Lanka who doesn't have solid, secure access to energy. So once solar panels on his printed solar on his roof to charge his batteries, to do his work as a software engineer, to get paid to power his fridge. And we get these conversations. So you don't know what tomorrow will hit in the inbound. But another one of those was actually, know, Coldplay.
That was one of the conversations which was, you know, we're looking to add to our sustainability profile and our objectives. Do you think you can help? So that project started in and around about January, February, 2024. We worked on that project of how we can think about helping to decarbonize the live concert environment. You know, these are these are heavy, heavy.
infrastructure that people are taking around the world and these projects and we need to look at solutions to be able to help with that. And so we went through a journey all last year of and this year of building a product that can be used in that environment and so it's an amazing an amazing journey that I certainly didn't think that would would happen.
Molly Wood
Where, what can you tell us about that actual deployment? Like where are the panels going? Are they on tour buses or that would be awesome by the way. We all want, we all want the panels on cars, but.
Anthony
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. So if you think of those enormous stadium events that you go to and there's the concert and then behind the stage, you've got that enormous amount of blacked out area. So what we do at the moment is we cover the equivalent of two or three tennis court sizes behind the stage on that black draping. So then we go, we can go two or three days before.
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Anthony
And we start to charge some of the batteries that used in different parts of the concert environment. And so the ultimate ambition could be that we replace all of that black draping with printed solar. So we roll it onto the sheets behind the stage. We can go three or four or five days before, let the sun hit the solar panel, or the printed solar, and we're charging batteries that are ready for the shows.
And so that's it's it's work in progress, but it's an amazing opportunity. And not least, it's allow us to gather data from about 20 countries and counting. And what we do quite simply is we roll it up like a concert poster and we put it into a put it into a cargo cart and it's put on an airplane and it's shipped to the next place. We pull it out, we roll it out, we collect some energy and we roll it up and we put it to the next.
next place. Now for me, it's a great, it's really high profile, fabulous organization to work with. But for me, it also educates me and makes me think about those different areas where we can deploy printed solar. Let's think about disaster relief. Let's think about, you know, decimals under United Nations. Let's think about all of those places where they need exactly this type of energy, which is flown in and rapidly deployed.
So what it does is it helps us start to think about, yes, live concert environments, but it also starts to educate us in how we can deploy this technology across vast industries and applications.
Molly Wood
Yeah. One of the. This is a bit out of order, but one of the other solar technologies I feel like I have been hearing about for a long time is perovskite.
and the promise of that being as flexible, know, when I mentioned that being on top of a car example, there's been that kind of long running promise. What is the difference here? I'm not asking you to, you know, talk smack about perovskite exactly, but what is the difference? Why have you succeeded where maybe that has not?
Anthony
Mm-hmm.
Anthony
Yeah, yeah, no, no, wait, wait, wait.
Well, I think we're not the guys to say this is better than that. We need all of these different types of solar technologies. Right. And actually, they're using an analogy. It's horses for courses. If we if we need to have a higher efficiency for a smaller space and it transpires at perovskites are the perfect area for that. Because again, remember, if it's a slightly higher price.
Molly Wood
Yep. Yep.
Anthony
because it's generating more efficient, then that's natural that it should be in a smaller area. But what we're saying is we'll go for the larger spaces. And so the way I, in very simple terms, the way I describe it is some technologies are looking to be the Ferrari, the top speed, the highest efficiency, really focused on that. Whereas I like to say that we're more like a family sedan, if you like.
Molly Wood
Got it.
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Anthony
We've got a lot more attributes that we can put in different places that require that certain dynamic. look, I actually hope, and I hope the guys working in the PROS guide figure it out. We want and we need all of these things.
Molly Wood
Toyota Camry, man, can't go wrong.
Molly Wood
Yep, yep. How much, can you give us a relative? Like how much cheaper is it?
Anthony
Yeah, so as we scale, we'll get a lot cheaper. And the ultimate journey will be getting down to about $10 a square meter, $10 US dollars a square meter to manufacture. It may be down to $0.75, $0.07 a kilowatt hour.
Molly Wood
And then how does that compare to like an existing silicon meter, panel meter?
Anthony
Yeah, I guess it's significantly cheaper. Yeah, it's significantly cheaper.
Molly Wood
Yeah. And honestly, how much you pay depends on where you live. Like here in the US, I would do my roof for $40,000, but in Australia, it would not cost that much. Costs.
Anthony
Absolutely right.
No, absolutely. And look, it's not just about how we're competing with a solar panel, because actually we're going to areas where our competition is not a solar panel. It's potentially the grid or it's in part of the world where blackouts happen all of the time. So how can we solve some of those problems? That's really what this essence is.
Molly Wood
Yep.
Molly Wood
And then.
And in terms of actual manufacturing, it's literal printing, right? Like in theory, it could be printed anywhere. How significant is the infrastructure needed to print these panels?
Anthony
So we talked about some of those other technologies that you mentioned. The infrastructure to build that can be quite expensive, which ultimately means we need to chase higher risk. I keep coming back to the efficiency, but the efficiency is essentially the commodity of what we're doing. If it's heavy infrastructure, we need to be able to recoup the cost. For us, we ultimately, so this is quite amazing. What's on tour with Coldplay at the moment, which is generating
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Anthony
solar energy was made via a repurposed wine label machine.
Molly Wood
What? So it's literal ink? It's not even like polymers and weird stuff?
Anthony
Yes. it's polymers. It's very sophisticated organic inks. But the printing machine, the printing machine was used to make wine labels. And we've converted that to print sustainable energy.
Molly Wood
Wow. Okay, so then what is that?
Anthony
Yes, and you did hear that right. And that's why it's not 30 years to, that's why it takes 30 years to be able to do this. Now again, the point that Paul has done this for is to allow the opportunity that we can convert these printers to printing energy all around the
Molly Wood
I know I'm a little bit like, huh, no wonder people are calling you all the time.
Molly Wood
Yep.
Anthony
We can put them in shipping containers. We can fly them into different parts of the world and people can print their own energy. This is the point of scale. This is the point of taking relatively straightforward technology that we can improve upon to print energy. It's very different. We're not looking for a $3 billion factory. In fact, our first factory will probably cost about $5 million. That's it.
Molly Wood
This is.
Anthony
To get to gigafactory scale, we're in the magnitude of 50 to $100 million for gigafactory scale production. Compare that to what you might be finding in other types of technologies. And again, I'm not trying to compare, but let's think this through. Let's think of cost, right? Again, what's the return on my overall investment? And that's why we've been working at this kind of completely different journey.
Molly Wood
I mean, I'm comparing like I'm definitely sitting here thinking about all the billions and hundreds of billions of dollars that have gone into fusion because, you know, I get very excited about fusion and everybody does. But then somebody who's been in solar a long time will come along and say, we have fusion. It's it's just it's giving me a little sunburn right now. Right. It's right there. And they will say and people will say to you, it is simply a deployment question.
Anthony
starting with, yeah, well.
Anthony
Buh-da-da
Anthony
And great.
Anthony
Yeah.
Correct, right?
Anthony
Yeah. it's well, and look, if we can quite right, if we can, if we can garner the sun's energy as cheaply as possible and we can deploy it in places where nothing else is hitting, nothing else has been used. Why wouldn't you? And why wouldn't you decouple, decouple the way we think about solar energy at this point in time? Why wouldn't you? need solar, silicon solar's been around.
Molly Wood
We don't have to invent a new technology.
Molly Wood
Yeah.
Anthony
30, 40, 50, 60 years probably, I guess. I'm not a silicon solar expert, but we know it's been around a while. We need different technologies because ultimately we have the demand. We have the demand in this energy transition. We need everything. We need everything yesterday.
Molly Wood
Do you think of this primarily as a decentralization solution? Because I think there's so much conversation about the grid and perhaps that conversation itself is a little outdated.
Anthony
Thank you.
Anthony
Well, it could be again. We look at.
Molly Wood
or could be.
Anthony
We look at these multi-billion dollar projects that were, and again, they're fantastic, but where these enormous silicon solar areas are going on a long way away from the cap as a city. And yet we're also paying, we might pay, I don't know the numbers, but a billion dollars on the solar factory and then a billion dollars for the transmission line to get to where the energy is needed. All right, well, let's think about it differently.
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Anthony
let's put printed solar in the middle of the city on that roof and let's start to power these places locally on site. And indeed, we can just start to charge. We can charge the batteries in those warehouses or wherever it might be. And one thing that we did with, as I've been to quite a few stadiums around the world now, as you can imagine, I started to look at stadiums differently.
Molly Wood
Mm-hmm.
Anthony
the roofs, lightweight roofs, let's just cover the roof with printed solar, but not least those seats, right? They're being used 10 % of the year. So a lot of them are in the middle of a city. Why don't we roller blinds literally like a roller blind cover the seats with printed solar as we're doing now. And you start to have a stadium solar farm.
Molly Wood
Right. Right.
Molly Wood
I have to think.
Anthony
It's how you start to think about, let's deconstruct what we know and let's think about it differently. When that starts to power up, it really does change the way you think about how we can generate energy.
Molly Wood
I mean, I would have to think that data centers are a part of this conversation as well. Yeah.
Anthony
Yeah, we've, again, you in terms of applications, we've had several data center opportunities as well. And again, that might not be for our first generation of technology. That might be for the one where we need two times as much space as a solar panel rather than four as we develop because there's different areas, environments that may need more energy than we can provide. And then it doesn't become the most appropriate.
technology, it might be for those higher efficient perovskite type technologies. And that's again, that's fine. But we continue to develop, right?
But what I must say is that what we have to be really careful is to try and be too much to all people. Because we know through experience, if you're not focused in what you're doing, you could ultimately try and spread yourself too thin.
Molly Wood
Yep.
Molly Wood
No pun intended, Anthony, no pun intended. You're like, you know what? I will intend to that pond in the future. That's right. No, absolutely not. Anthony Letmon is the co-founder and CEO of Kardinia Energy, the technology that could change the world. I love it. Thank you so much for the time.
Anthony
Actually, thank you very much. I'll take that one. Yeah, please don't cut that bit out.
Anthony
Thank you so much. Pleasure. Thank you.
Molly Wood Voice-Over:
All right that's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening.
There will probably never be an end to conversations about energy generation and grid upgrades and decentralization and data center power demands but next week we’re going camping. Stay tuned.
Keep the feedback coming what’s the weirdest place you’d put a roll of printed solar?
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