Carmanah : des LED solaires

Encore une note intéressante de Tyler (Clean Break) interviewant Art Aylesworth, le patron de Carmanah sur ses LED 'solaires'

"I had a great chat the other day with Art Aylesworth, chief executive officer of Victoria-based Carmanah Technologies, about his proposed 5-year business plan for the company. Carmanah has established itself firmly in the aviation, marine, roadway and transit verticals, and over the coming years it will continue to drive deeper into those markets with the next-generation of its solar-powered LED lighting products.

But "the place where all the benefits of the company are crystalizing is general lighting," said Aylesworth. "We're getting our act together for general lighting and finalizing our design." We're talking everything from little lights for inground pools to bright city street lights powered by a combination of the sun and an energy storage pack. This would include lighting for pathways, parking lots, campuses, phone booths. "Everywhere you want light and it's not convenient to have power lines. That would probably be universally the best system we could make," he said.

The key to doing this, he added, is to have a solar engine with an optimized energy management system that can be adapted for a variety of applications. Aylesworth's plan is for Carmanah to be the first company in the world to have a plug-and-play solar engine that you can pretty much buy off the shelf and install yourself -- and you don't need to be an engineer to do it. There would be many different versions suiting different applications. "There's no future in custom installs," he said, "because you can't build a world business out of it."

Does that mean Carmanah-made solar-LED lights could make their way to the consumer market? "When we have it nailed down so it's bullet proof for discerning high-end customers that are industrial, then we'll see what would happen to the cost (if we mass produce)."

At that point, Carmanah would likely go to a company like General Electric and ask if they can make such a product for the consumer market using that company's brand. "GE is already on me to make solar light fixtures," said Aylesworth. "That tells me we're on the right track. The challenges now are just execution."

And if those challenges can be met, Carmanah could be positioned to more than quadruple its sales over the next five years."

Source : Clean Break