In February,
Yonge Street reporter Piali Roy
heralded 2010 as a big year for Morgan Solar, noting that the energy startup has scored over $5 million in seed funding and was preparing to produce its potentially game-changing solar energy product, Sun Simba. Now, the company has annouced that solar industry superstar Asif Ansari, formerly head of eSolar in California, will become its CEO.
MaRS cleantech lead and industry expert Tom Rand
calls Ansari's relocation to Toronto "the biggest brain gain for Ontario in the
cleantech sector I've seen. Ansari has enjoyed a string of successes, including
eSolar, and he didn't come to Morgan to fail. The quality of Morgan's
management team, with these sorts of additions, demonstrates their
ability to go global on a major scale."
In an announcement, Ansari says his decision to take the job and move to Toronto was motivated by his impression that the company will transform the industry. "
Morgan Solar has done something I wasn't sure was
possible -- they have cracked the code for CPV optics, substantially lowering its costs to where it can now deliver a
value proposition significantly better than PV," he said. "Morgan was able to see the problem in a whole new way,
starting with inventing a new optical concentrator to replace
conventional Fresnel lens architectures. The potential of this
technology is massive."
Currently, Ansari is focussed on securing second-round financing as Morgan Solar prepares for large-scale production in 2011.
Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Nicolas Morgan, VP Business Development, Morgan Solar Inc.