EEVblog #1025 - Minute Physics + Bill Nye Promoting Rayton Solar

hi one of my favorite YouTube channels is minutephysics run by Henry Reich he does these awesome like very short not 1 minute but very short physics tutorial explanation videos are typically animated like this and they're absolutely fantastic one of the few channels that I watch every single video from the subscription feed from so I'm a huge fan but I got an email alert last night and from the thumbnail of the video and the title I knew exactly what this one was about and I feel compelled to respond and there's just a couple of things here which I think really need addressing and the public need to be made aware of that I don't think Henry actually are covered in his video here now what it is is he's basically done a sponsored video so he's accepted money to produce this video from a company called irate on solar they menu they've got this new process technology for manufacturing solar cells and they've got a an equity crowdfunding campaign it's not Kickstarter or IndieGoGo or anything like that it's actually equity crowdfunding which is a different thing and they've already raised 7 million dollars of a 50 million dollar goal and they've basically paid him sponsored him to do this physics a very cool physics explanation video of how their technology works which is great the video in itself is great and the technology is very cool about how you can use a basically a particle in excel ion particle accelerator to produce really ultra-thin solar cells so it really fits in with his channel of cool physics and science explanations no worries whatsoever and minutephysics have actually been doing that quite a few sponsored videos recently I haven't had a problem with them I am a full-time content youtube producer as well have been for over six years and I understand the need to actually you know to make a living from this thing either through sponsorship or advertising or merchandise or brand deals or whatever it is to stay afloat I'm a huge supporter of content producers and I'm here supporter of minutephysics I've had no problems with he's sponsored videos recently but this one I have a bit of a question with so rather than just promoting a product or a brand or a some educational thing or whatever which I have no problems with this is actually essentially promoting investment in an equity crowdfunding campaign and one which i think is actually very very risky as I'll go into and sure enough at the end of the video I Henry rightly has a disclaimer and we'll just quickly run through that the company that's trying to use the particle accelerator technology I talked about in this video to make solar cells on a commercial scale this company is called rate on solar this is a challenging and expensive endeavor and they're looking for investors so they sponsored this video to get the word out start engine comm slash startup slash rate on solar I'm not gonna make any endorsement I mean I'm neither an investment expert nor a solar industry expert but I do believe strongly that we need both political and technological solutions to secure our planets energy future so I'm happy to help Reitan reach a broader audience to help give them a chance for this clever idea to succeed and I'm making a small investment myself hopefully they'll end up being one of the many many pieces that come together to provide a civilized long term future for Humanity on earth and that's it and great I'm excellent thank you for the disclaimer and I'm all for that I am definitely not anti-technology anti science and here anti innovation any of that sort of stuff and I as I've talked about in my previous video on this I've actually like I thought I think this is cool tech and I think that they're you know really doing some nice stuff but Henry said that is not endorsing this but unfortunately just the act of taking the sponsored video making this video and saying that he's an investor himself it's effectively an implied endorsement by doing this video I'm sorry that's just you know it essentially is and by the way they've got and when he shot this video is only 5.3 million dollars that they have raised and now they're up to to 7.2 million so I can only presume that is a result of Henry's videos people who have rushed in and invested almost two million dollars on the back of this unless they've got marketing are somewhere else so while I'm all for promoting cool tech research investment all that sort of stuff you've got to remember this is not a university doing this or something like that this is a commercial entity with patents trying to raise 50 million dollars to actually produce these solar cells so it is a commercial endorsement effectively what he's doing there even though he says he's not endorsing it just by doing the video I think he effectively is unfortunately now this isn't the first time that the company has actually used a big name to actually help fund and promote equity crowdfunding campain here they actually got Bill Nye the Science Guy to actually do some promotional videos for them this was like actually nine months ago it came on my radar a couple of months ago and I actually shot a second Channel video it was on eevblog - it's a 17 minutes long which I'll actually link at the end of this video hence why this videos so long and it goes through my initial reaction to the Bill Nye promotion of this so they've actually got very clever marketing to get a reputable guy like Bill Nye to actually promote them and now they got Henry from minutephysics who are potentially like they've got two sides of the audience they've got Bill Nye who might appeal to you less techy type people and you've got the followers of minutephysics who are you know clued up people interested in physics and other cool tech um so they're really they're marketing hats off to the marketing from rate on solar they really know what they're doing so I'll pin that 17 minute video at the end of this but here's the TL deal take away a summary for this now rate on solar makes some very specific claims so we'll look at that very briefly and then look at the risk involved so one of their first claims when you are wafer saw a regular silicon ingot to produce regular solar cells they you actually have a lot of loss which is called kerf loss and that is true it's you actually waste about 50% of the silicon just saw in it you have like I say a hundred and fifty microns of silicon then 150 micron width saw and then it just gets destroyed into dust so there is a lot of waste there so they are very correct that that is a thing but thing that you have not been told is that this curve loss or the cost of the actual silicon are used in solar cells is only about you can see the dark bar down there that is the actual silicon cost involved in producing the solar cell module itself and which is about 15 to 20 percent of the cost so they have actually made a specific claim here that they are 60% cheaper I presume this is going to be modules so that just does not tally up how can you have a 60% reduction in cost of a module which they seem to be employing when the silicon cost which is the only problem that they're actually solving here is only 15 to 20% of the manufacturing cost of a solar panel it does not add up and the next claim is about the efficiency they claim are their solar panels have the potential potential to achieve 24% efficiency versus 90% of typical efficiency of current production solar cells and this is roughly true I will explain further on in the video but some of the better panels on the market now are approached in that 24 percent figure like 22 percent things like that so they're getting all the time well they actually claim 25 percent are more efficient overall than regular solar panels with an actual efficiency of 24 percent in the panel so your regular commercial solar panels are pretty much catching up on the efficiency there so I'll kind of you know like I'll still give it to them oh say okay they might be 10 20 percent more efficient than current production panels no worries so will though they have a pattern granted on this technology and they claim to have exclusive use and all sorts of stuff what they don't tell you is this is not new technology and there are many other competitors including our publicly funded research which I cover further on in my video we're doing a similar sort of thing trying to solve the same problem that 50% kerf loss in the silicon the raw silicon manufacture stage so the marketing sounds are really good on this and they might be the only players in the market but they're not not by a longshot and there's many other different process technologies that can achieve the same sort of result without the high cost on particle accelerator that they're planning to use here just be aware of that now the next thing is that engineers like me are really easy to convince just show us the data that's it one thing you won't find on the rate on so lot website is anything any data whatsoever I cover that manufacture little small little prototype further in the video but there's absolutely no data it is almost exclusively marketing with all your regular infographics and everything else and when there's no data you've got to be really wary of stuff like this so there's actually a third claim here a hundred times less silicon than the next competitor yeah fine great but that's built into the 60% less expensive to manufacture claim which i think is not valid so I don't understand that at all and the rest of it is talking about market you know potential and all the usual infographic type stuff that goes along to any investment campaign like this but one thing you won't find on here is data hmm I don't know if anyone can find it please tell me down below now the last thing is the risk in this just a general startup technology like this runs it you know like sub 10% or even a few percent success rate so right off the bat when you invest in equity in a start-up it's already inherently risky but let's actually look at the Security and Exchange Commission's disclosure of the rate on solar thing this is effectively the fine print of what you're investing here and if we actually go down it is very very explicit in the risks here and they are huge have a listen first up they've been running at a loss but hey that's not unusual for a start-up company like this so yeah no worries now I'll post a link down below and you can read this for yourself I won't bore you with the details but what this is basically saying is that the auditor of the company's accounts which you have to have when you equity crowdfunding is that they have a going concern opinion on its financial statement saying that they are basically reliant upon getting this investment otherwise they're at risk of simply going bankrupt and out of business and this here is an absolute huge red flag I'll read this if the company cannot raise sufficient funds it will not succeed or will require significant additional capital infusions rate on salaries offer in common stock in the amount of up to 50 million dollars in this offering but may sell much less currently seven million after seven million is raised presumably they've already done that but looks about the following three million will go to selling security holders even if the maximum around mount is raised so even if they raise their fifty million dollars the company is likely to need additional funds in the future in order to grow and if it cannot raise those funds for whatever reason including reasons outside the company's control of course such as another significant downturn blah blah it may not survive this is the opinion of the auditor for this thing even if they get their fifty million dollars if the company does not sell all of its common stock it is offering it will have to find other sources of funding in order to develop its business so if they don't get the fifty million dollars they're not good they have to find somebody else to invest otherwise those people who've already invested into this equity crowdfunding campaign have basically lost their money because they'll go out of business and right here it says they'll actually need thirty five million dollars to create a fifty four megawatt that they need to actually start manufacturing facilities say right off the bat there it's 35 million dollars or bust and this amount does not include the money required to actually manufacture the PV modules for sale so wow this is a high-stakes game and then I'll leave you to read all the rest about all the regular stuff outside of their control they're an early-stage startup company so you know the technology is not actually proving yet on any sort of scale that makes its are commercially viable they're dependent upon this particular particle accelerator which they having delivered this year I believe they've already ordered it and it's on its way so developing new products encounters and anyway there's all sorts of stuff which is all fully disclosed here and it's very very frank about the huge risks involved in this thing and that's my main reason for doing this video because this has now been promoted by Bill Nye the Science Guy and also minutephysics to their minutephysics is four million our subscribers it's like a huge market and really they haven't linked in the risk I know all this risk security Exchange Commission stuff is actually linked on the website it's all part of the investment please read our office circulate so it's all disclosed but I'm just afraid that people will you know take a minute physics as video as like an endorsement and not really do the due diligence research and you can't really blame people for not going in and reading all the details in here and that's my fear I just wanted to make people aware that there are huge risks in investing in a company and technology like this so anyway I won't go into any more details I've got another 17 minutes I'll append at my original video right now and you can watch that thing that was my initial reaction to the Bill Nye the Science Guy promotion and nothing much has really changed since no real data has come forth it's easy to convince guys like me just really show me the data and that would help me feel you know more warm and fuzzy about this particular thing but I can't help personally thinking that this is one of the most riskiest investments that I've seen in the Tec space but this is not a university research this is not publicly funded research this is a commercial company patent-protected company trying to raise 50 million dollars through equity crowdfunding so there you go I just want to make people aware of that and Wow have they really raised 2 million bucks since Henry made that video I think it worked that was a wise investment on their part anyway it's $500 minimum investment by the way and yeah I wouldn't touch this which of bargepole personally but that's just me do your own research so basically while this sounds like cool science and it is the actual prospects for this I not terrific I mean they're talking about it you know a small improvement in efficiency perhaps that may or may not be there down the track and by their own best-case marking investments a 60% reduction in module cost which I don't think they can get anywhere near because they're only solving that one problem with a silicon wafer that's it and that's only like 15 odd percent which takes it out of the module cost which takes it out and down to sub 10 percent of the module cost which is nothing groundbreaking at all so yeah this is not revolutionary stuff but still cool science so there you go I hope they helped out some people there with some information and as I said I'll link in the 17-minute video with more details at the end of this because I am a huge supporter of solar power renewable energy all that sort of stuff I got I'll link in a whole bunch of our solar power solar energy videos I've done at the end of this video if you want to check those out so please don't say I'm anti science any innovation all that sort of stuff I'm definitely not I just think people need to be aware of what sort of investment that's actually been promoted here and it essentially is being promoted by default of Henry actually doing this video in which I'm fully supportive of him actually doing this if you know he's obviously passionate it fits his channel everything's just fine and dandy the content was great any he wants to do this that's fine I fully support him it's not like I'm gonna stop watching in a ragequit or something like that I just you know see this as a commercial investment promotion and I'm just trying to put some facts across there but I want to know what you guys think about this do you think Henry maybe made a mistake from posting this video maybe did he cross some sort of line for you in promoting is it a an effective promotion of a commercial investment type thing or do you have no problems with it whatsoever I really wanna know what you think so leave it in the comments down below so I hope you enjoyed that if you did please give it a big thumbs up because that always helps a lot and here comes the 17 minute video I originally done nothing much has really changed since then except they've got Henry to promote it as well as Bill Nye the Science Guy anyway catch you next time okay I was gonna link in the whole video but I realized that a lot of the stuff I just go over again that I've already explained in this 17 minute video is supposed to be shorter so I've really edited this down and if you want to watch the full video I did a couple of months back I'll link it in it's over on the eevblog 2 channel so this one's really edited for brevity somebody on the EEV blog forum was complaining me what is this it smells a bit you know BSE um well let's let's check it out show anything so they've raised 3 Paul most three point two million dollars of their goal of 50 million dollars so twenty three hundred and forty four investors have so far contributed at least five hundred dollars you're going to contribute five hundred dollars so hey good on them right they're raising money and they've recruited none other than Bill Nye the Science Guy and take it away bill let's extol the virtues of this wonderful new manufacturing technology it can convert sunlight into electricity with a couple of thin silicon wafers in a sandwich a very thin one for decades to get a thin piece of pure silicon don't you had to saw it off a thick piece of pure silicon saw turns a lot of that silicon into dust this process behind for making integrated circuit chips for computers or smartphones because the amount of silicon used is so small but for manufacturing big solar panels out in the wide open spaces big green cars a lot to waste a lot of pure silicon the gang at rate on solar has to happen a way to chip off an extraordinarily thin piece of pure so the remark not was a song with a subatomic particle an atom smasher it doesn't smash atoms as such it smashes protons into the a ton of a chunk of silicon technicians can control the depth to which these particles penetrate with precision so they can place the particles perfectly and once the particles are perfectly in place great time writing a nudge using a little bit of heat just slice your silicon is set free a little bit of pure silicon goes a long way sounds great on that'll do anyway so what they're what they're doing which is really cool I like the idea right the concept is really good there is a lot of waste in silicon wafers we'll have a look at some other some data on that in a minute now first of all this is not their first attempt at actually raising money for this thing they've been going there for quite some time back in 2014 I think it was 2014-2015 they ran an IndieGoGo campaign unfortunately they only raised five grand of their $50,000 flexible gold not sure what they were going to produce with their $50,000 but now they're talking about this so thin that they're flexible and everything else okay fine but that doesn't seem to be there maybe they've like changed their focus maybe it used to be like like flexible solar cells now they're just you know concerned with like mass producing and commercial and residential rooftop solar cells just cheaper which is fantastic and you know it looks stock images of particle accelerators and everything else once again like Uncle Sam Uncle Sam yes what on earth why I have that on you web like on your IndieGoGo campaign like American jobs okay fine any ridiculous so they didn't raise that so now but they've raised now our weight raising serious capital right 3.1 million they are on their way to their 50 million bucks so is it true that we waste a lot of these silicon ingots for manufacturing solar cells well well actual silicon wafers which then go into solar cells yes it is there's you know articles over here and you know raw material of 50 percent over 50 percent is machined into dust and stuff like that so yes it's true there's a lot of wastage or what's called our kerf loss in these in got manufacturing when you slice the silicon wafers off so you know have they come up with some new whiz-bang technology to do this well yes but they're not the only ones working on this of course every man and his dog working on silicon wafer manufacture for solar cell production there's many companies around the world out there continually researching and optimizing new ways he is back in 2015 an article in physics dog or whatever it is on the Fraunhofer Institute which are coming up with a new way to actually produce and in got to do this and if you go over here it is the furthers their press release for it back in 2015 you know yeah it's trying to solve exactly the same problem they're not the only ones to do this and the way they're gonna do it you're gonna read all the details for yourself as did to basically produce ingots in a different way instead of using your regular silicon chip pure ingots and stuff like that just manufacture them differently and here's another company called Applied Materials this is a our per thing so this is a government initiative and they're working to actually do exactly the same thing two seconds Google search just turned up this sort of stuff so they've got that they got a five million dollar government grant buy it from ARPA so 60% cheaper panels well they're getting cheaper and cheaper in Cheaper every year so yeah you've got to stay ahead of the curve there but hey we'll just take them at face value there even though they've provided no evidence for this 60% cheaper where they've got that number from we just don't know it now efficiency they claim to have the potential to achieve a twenty four percent efficiency versus the 19 percent high level a single cell efficiency rate well let's go and have a look at current solar panels so the data is fairly new from manufacturers and they 19 yeah okay the bulk is going to maybe we'll take him at that value in nineteen but manufacturers like Panasonic and SunPower for example they are up to twenty one twenty two percent efficiency already so you know as the march of technology continues every year they're just getting more efficient for a lower price but hey we'll give them that will we'll pay that one that typically 19 percent at the moment go to twenty four percent there's your twenty five percent more efficient so yeah their number is you know spot on but once again where is their data well I don't see any data whatsoever to back this up I don't see any test results I don't see any performance curves efficiency curves I don't see any measurements at all in any of this and like if you go into updates there's just some update about we're gonna buy the you know here's an accelerator we're about to buy one if we get enough cash please join data and really change the world blah blah blah and check this out if we go over to their YouTube channel there is some bizarre mix of what like how to get along with your extended family at Thanksgiving how to do a facial mask what what what what's going on here mixed in with we've got our accelerator on the way I versus solar and I like and his bill nighy back ten months ago he did this apparently our presents and there's some beauty tips and like mixed in anyway there is one the only demo they've got is this which is their solar cell demo it looks like they've in bed a solar cell in a condom and there that's the little so they've produced one little wafer but like where's the measurements okay it might be three microns thick show me the data all right I'm not convinced unless we get the data they're all talk they're all hype they're all marketing and they might have a cool pattern on a cool idea but that doesn't turn into practical reality they've gone into start-up mode right tried to no they did an unsuccessful IndieGoGo that was incomplete flop and then they went AHA we can do equity crowdfunding will pay bill will up the money I don't know whether they got the money from I don't know how much it cost to get Bill Nighy on here but yeah we get Bill Nighy and it'll go viral on Facebook cause it's Bill Nye and and great marketing that's off right they've done a really good marketing job but that seems to be all they have and there's other companies there's at least two I found and I could probably find COO and be surprised if I couldn't find half a dozen working on ways to reduce the loss in silicon wafers because I if you're wasting what is that 60% they said as the cost menu reduce cost by 60% just by eliminating the waste there's companies working on that that's what they do they eliminate waste and inefficiency in their processes to produce more viable products so this without any data without showing that it's manufacturable at scale at costs to get this they too have provide no evidence where they're going to get their cost reduction from in actual manufacturing terms and there's like they've manufactured one little silicon cell in a condom so yeah I don't know flapping around in the breeze there it's not a scam okay they're just yeah marking in over substance you've got to look into the details before you invest in something like this cuz T average panner to Joe average on the street this is it sounds fantastic invest in solar cell technology the future and yeah good luck to them they've already raised 2.8 million in initial funding I so maybe that's where that's what went to Bill Nye so that's not all and of course huge risk in this one I just don't see any data to back it up lots of fancy infographics that's if infographic central I mean it's just as seen on all the usual crap right I don't know good good luck to you guys you look like you know it no it's not a scam at all they've just got an interesting idea that may or may not turn out to be practical so best of luck but if you're gonna invest in this do your own research you

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 72,593

Keywords: eevblog, video, minute physics, response, rayton solar, marketing, promotion, minute physics solar, response video, startengine, equity crowd funding

Id: dxRsxmDcIYs

Length: 29min 44sec (1784 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 20 2017