Forget bulky solar panels that can only be installed on top of strong buildings. How about making energy instead from thin, flexible solar sheets that can be placed anywhere, even atop buses and trucks?
Israeli scale-up Apollo Power is doing just that, in a business that already earns millions of dollars in revenue yearly, says Noam Mulla, general manager for the Americas. Active in Israel and Europe, the company is now in the permitting stages for its first major U.S. projects and is pitching its solar sheets for public transport in Miami-Dade County, Mulla says.
The venture began in 2014 when two pals sought to develop a solar paint. They wanted to replace traditional solar panels, which require a considerable amount of heavy, durable glass outside to protect fragile, breakable silicon cells inside. The partners came up with a thin, bendable solar sheet that won’t crack and is so light that it can sit on vehicles and on curved rooftops. The solar sheet can make “portable energy, a perfect fit for transport, defense or disaster-relief operations,” Mulla explains.
Automakers have been early adopters. Volkswagen has signed a multi-year contract, while Audi and Hyundai have embedded Apollo’s technology in car parts to help charge batteries in both conventional and electric vehicles, Mulla says. Charging vehicle batteries with solar energy cuts fuel consumption and carbon emissions, and it also limits battery discharge and maintenance, Mulla says. Those benefits helped Apollo Power earn an E-mobility Award at Europe’s Intersolar conference last year. The awards team called the technology “an easy, practical, and clean charging solution for commercial transport.”
Apollo Power is so keen on deploying the technology that it has built a $50 million factory in Israel that can churn out 2,000 of its solar sheets daily, each measuring two square meters. Funding has come mainly from Israeli groups, with some $10 million raised last year alone through the Tel Aviv stock exchange.
The company established a U.S. presence in late 2023, bringing on Mulla, an Israeli attorney with experience in renewable energy in Israel and the Americas. He works from Cooper City and is building a distribution network to extend into Latin America and the Caribbean.
He’s keen to supply homes and businesses in areas where electricity costs are high and distribution grids sometimes fail. He also sees potential after natural disasters to outfit temporary shelters, emergency-relief vehicles, and community centers, among countless uses across the diverse Americas. Mulla likes to tell the story of a colleague who had installed Apollo Power sheets on her home in North Carolina. When a hurricane knocked out the area’s electric grid, “she had solar energy,” Mulla says, “so the neighbors came to shower at her house.”
