Photovoltaic (PV) arrays remain unattractive to business owners as an investment for several reasons, including delayed return on investment (ROI), limited lifetime, and most of all inefficiencies in power production. Today’s panels only produce about 20% of the sun’s energy into electric power, and performance drops as panels heat up daily. Of course, the sun sets daily and production drops to zero, often during peak demand. Also, thermal cycling stresses the PV panels, reducing performance during their lifetime, and reducing their lifespan. These problems, particularly the long ROI, continue to postpone widespread adoption of solar PV systems in commercial settings.

Icarus’ Quartet system addresses these problems by cooling PV panel temperatures during operation, boosting panel electrical power output by 12-18%. Reducing the impact of thermal cycling improves performance throughout the panel lifetime.  Harvesting the waste heat in the form of stored hot water can replace or offset other water heating methods, saving the end user on utility costs and reducing CO2 emissions in addition to the PV enhancements.  Quartet’s thermal storage allows users to consume hot water at peak demand time without paying peak demand prices.  Icarus is targeting midsize C&I industries as a customer base for Quartet such as multi-family housing, commercial/municipal buildings, hospitals, and hotels, where the cost savings with Quartet will be substantial.  Icarus’ beachhead market is multi-family housing.  The recent restrictions on natural gas appliances in new construction (for example already in California) provides an opportunity for Quartet as an alternative hot water supplier. 

Icarus RT, Inc. is an award-winning advanced engineering company founded in 2016 and based in San Diego, CA developing Quartet, a low-cost hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) solar plus storage cogeneration system. Quartet nearly doubles the energy output of new and existing, commercial, and industrial PV arrays while cutting the payback period and the CO2 emissions in half. A 100-kW commercial scale Quartet system generates 334,000 kWh/year and prevents 220 MT CO2e emissions.

Icarus’ core mission is to safely empower our team, our customers, and our community to provide more reliable, less expensive, and cleaner global energy. To that end, we are steadfast in our commitment to produce quality, game-changing products and services through innovation and focus. 

Accomplishments are vast as borne out by the programs and awards Icarus has completed and achieved, notably “4th Revolution 2023 Product Design of the Year”. In addition to that Icarus completed or won:

 

 

All these milestones and awards provide Icarus a massive competitive advantage through mentorship, business leadership and guidance, technical assistance, funding and networking for business development. 

 

Most recently, in March 2023, Icarus was invited by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) to submit a pre-proposal to the Department of Defense (DOD) in March 2023. Trane agreed to serve as the energy services company (ESCO) and co-applicant with Icarus and NREL. As a result, NREL, Icarus, and Trane submitted a full proposal August 17, 2023 ($1.8 million). We were invited to present the proposal and answer questions for the DOD in Washington DC on September 25, 2023. Trane is involved because if the demo succeeds, they will deploy it rapidly and widely.

 

Regarding Business Development: The most exciting part is that suddenly we find ourselves among numerous big, very important, and highly supportive players helping us with business development not limited to:

 

 

Projects in progress: We have several other projects already in contract and/or in progress:

 

Grant activity: Grants will continue to remain an major factor in Icarus development plans and will continue to play an important role by continuing to provide visibility, validation, and most of all non-dilutive funding. Besides the $1.8 million NREL/Trane/Icarus/DOD grant above, we also have a $2.7 million submission in review with the CEC to build a production facility. Once we win a grant to build a facility (there are several options including DOE and CEC), Halliburton’s Global Scale Up team will guide us through a methodical approach, starting with outside vendors.