An Albuquerque tech company recently signed a partnership with a European firm that will expand the manufacturing of a customizable space solar panel technology.
That technology, called DragonSCALES, is the flagship product of Albuquerque-based mPower Technology Inc. The company, which also has a regional office in Carlsbad, Calif., announced Tuesday that it signed a "strategic partnership" with GTM Advanced Structures, an advanced manufacturing company based in The Hague in the Netherlands.
The partnership comes with an expansion of mPower's manufacturing space at a GTM site in the Netherlands to over 20,000 square feet. It will also establish a "dedicated team" to assemble mPower's DragonSCALES solar panels in Europe, according to an mPower news release.
Kevin Hell, mPower's president and CEO, told Business First that GTM would handle the "high-level assembly" of the DragonSCALES panels; "SCALES" means semiconductor active layer embedded solar. Those solar cells are made using high-efficiency silicon cells, which make them lightweight and durable, according to a white paper on the technology.
"They have a tremendous amount of experience in that area," Hell said about GTM, which counts 3M, Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force among its other partners and clients. "They're based in Europe where many of our space customers are also based, and they have a great history and reputation around this kind of higher-level of assembly."
Hell said he first heard of GTM through some of mPower's larger customers in Europe, which is home to about 40% of mPower's customer base.
"Many of the major space primes in Europe know GTM and trust GTM, so they're a great partner through that perspective," Hell said.
While mPower currently runs its module manufacturing in the U.S. and its panel assembly through GTM in the Netherlands, Hell said he wants to expand U.S. manufacturing sometime in 2024 or 2025. New Mexico could be the spot for that manufacturing base down the road, he added.
"As a business we have to consider if there are other options," Hell said. "But ideally we'd find something that meets all the requirements in New Mexico. That would be where we would like to see it happen, absolutely."
Gravitics Inc., a Seattle-based space manufacturing company, picked mPower to use DragonSCALES for its StarMax space station modules late last year, and Hell said that mPower has about 20 active engagement for other contracts at the moment.
The company raised $10 million in a Series B round early last year. That round was led by Cottonwood Technology Fund, which has offices in Santa Fe and the Netherlands.
A previous version of this story incorrectly identified an Albuquerque company that partnered with a European firm. mPower Technology Inc. reached an agreement with GTM Advanced Structures, an advanced manufacturing company based in The Hague in the Netherlands.
