Picasolar Picks Up Award, $1M in Funding

Fayetteville solar startup Picasolar tied for first place recently in the Greentech division of the South by Southwest Eco Startup Showcase in Austin, Texas.

The third-annual event spotlighted innovative early-stage companies in three divisions — Greentech, Cleanweb and Social Impact.

Eight companies competed in each category, which concluded Oct. 8 in front of a live audience and a judging panel of top investors.

Picasolar is commercializing a technology developed internally at Silicon Solar Solutions, a University of Arkansas-affiliated startup founded in 2008 by Seth Shumate, Douglas Hutchings and Hafeez Mohammed. Silicon Solar Solutions owns the majority interest in Picasolar.

The technology, a hydrogen selective emitter, could improve the efficiency of solar cells by 15 percent, reducing the manufacturing cost per watt and making the panels more affordable for consumers.

And the state of solar energy is growing rapidly in the United States, Hutchings explained. As of Sept. 30, more solar has been installed in the U.S. in the last 18 months than in the previous three decades, and a new solar project was installed every four minutes in the U.S. last year.

Picasolar was the only Arkansas company at the Startup Showcase.

“The list of people who attend the Startup Showcase at SXSW Eco is pretty impressive and I think we made the state of Arkansas look good,” Hutchings, the company’s CEO, told the Arkansas Newswire. “I was nervous that we would not be a good fit. I typically associated the event with very consumer-facing innovations and we are selling industrial equipment.

“Picasolar obviously resonated with the judges and the crowd, though, and it turned out fantastic.”

There was no cash prize for winning the event. Picasolar did, however, receive more good news Oct. 22 when it was announced as an award winner in the U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative program, worth $1 million in funding over the next year.

A year ago, the company was awarded $500,000 through the same program.

Hutchings said the latest round of SunShot Incubator funding will be a great complement to the company’s current efforts at a private funding round.

“We can accomplish some exciting things in the very near future,” Hutchings said. “We made some fantastic connections in Austin that could help us in the next round.”