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Tandem PV, a Silicon Valley startup, claims it is close to shipping full-size tandem solar modules to US customers for paid trials, according to the company’s chief executive, Scott Wharton. In comments to the solar industry publication pv-tech, Wharton argued that critics of perovskite-tandem technology’s long-term impact fail to grasp how economics work.
Wharton, a serial startup businessman rather than a solar specialist, said perovskite-tandem technology will dominate the market within six years. He attributed that possibility to Silicon Valley culture and described the last 18 months as busy for the company.
In March 2025, Tandem PV raised US$50 million from venture capital firm Eclipse to fund a commercial-scale tandem module production line. In April this year, it began operations at a demonstration facility in the Silicon Valley enclave of Fremont, California. In August, it secured a US$7.7 million grant from the Department of Energy, which the company said would speed up the rollout of its tandem modules. The company claims those modules have a 29.7% conversion efficiency.
In June, former US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm joined the company’s board of directors. Wharton described the developments as votes of confidence from outside parties in the company’s ability to succeed, adding that Granholm serves on few boards and that the Department of Energy grant was notable because he believed Tandem PV was the only company in the solar space to win a grant under that particular programme.
Wharton outlined three requirements for commercialising perovskites: efficiency, durability and manufacturability. He said Tandem PV has shown efficiency with its 29.7% demonstration modules and claims the company has achieved less than 1% degradation per year on its products. Those claims have apparently been verified by bodies including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, now the National Laboratory of the Rockies, and the Renewable Energy Testing Centre, though that certification has been absent from the company’s public announcements.
He said industry announcements mean little without the durability needed to be commercially viable, and that the third requirement is the ability to make larger products rather than only small form factors. At the demonstration facility, he said, the company is now showing that it can make large products that are about as good as those made in research and development.
Asked how Tandem PV has seemingly overcome the degradation issue that has challenged efforts to commercialise perovskite products, Wharton said the question is hard to answer and compared it to explaining why certain companies excel in their fields.
Tandem PV is not alone in claiming to have begun commercial tandem module production. UK-based Oxford PV has reportedly sold its first commercial-scale tandem modules for pilot testing and has licensed its patent portfolio to major commercial solar manufacturers, while other players have made claims about approaching industrial production.
Wharton said the company’s team is a big part of its success, featuring about 20 PhDs and chief technology officer Colin Bailie, who was involved in developing what was reportedly the world’s first silicon-perovskite tandem cell while at Stanford University. He said the team built a platform of solutions over the years.
He explained that a couple of years ago the company got the perovskite stable enough to start seeing other failure conditions. He likened progress in durability to peeling away layers of an onion, saying that unless the core perovskite layer is stable, other failure conditions remain hidden. Once that problem was solved, he said, the company could push further, moving from hundreds of hours to 1,000 hours to many thousands of hours and to more than a year outside without any degradation.
Before the end of the year, Tandem PV expects to start paid trials with more than a dozen of the big players in the US independent power producer market. Wharton said the goal is not to make money but to get a significant number of modules in the field to prove the product is bankable. He also said the company plans to scale up a gigafactory by 2028.
Tandem PV is targeting the utility-scale sector with its tandem modules, which may surprise some because perovskites are often thought of as a niche technology suitable for small-scale applications in space, small rooftops or other specialist deployments. Some sceptics have argued that time and money spent on perovskites is effectively wasted when crystalline silicon PV is already abundant, understood, stable and cheap.
Wharton rejected both positions. He said the true sceptics are right that silicon PV is an established technology but do not understand how economics works. He said a 22% efficiency panel that works is fine, but the value of a higher efficiency panel is that more efficiency requires less labour, less land and less balance of system, lowering the overall cost. He noted that the industry moved from PERC to TOPCon to gain a 2% efficiency boost, while tandems offer 7-12%.
He added that unlike the shift from PERC to TOPCon, tandem technology is not a replacement because it can leverage existing TOPCon infrastructure or other technologies. Once products at 30% efficiency are cheaper for customers, he said, no one will buy a 22% panel, and companies not at 30% will be out of business, describing this as a fundamental economic shift.
Wharton framed that shift as the tip of the spear for solving climate change. He acknowledged that climate-related messaging has broadly given way to energy security and economic benefits, particularly in the US, but said he chose this project because he saw it as one of the most meaningful impacts he and the team could have on climate change.
He appeared unfazed by anti-renewables rhetoric from the Trump administration, referring to the current President of the United States, and emphasised the importance of better economics and physics. He said ideology does not matter and that he picked the technology because it had better economics and physics, arguing that people may be asked to do something good for the environment but most will not do it if it is not cheaper. He said he is counting on people acting out of self-interest, with solving climate change as a beneficial side effect.
Wharton said Silicon Valley has a culture of leapfrogging. He described two views of the solar industry: one that China dominates manufacturing so US companies should replicate that success at home, and another that China dominates manufacturing so US companies should jump ahead to the next frontier. He said it is typically very hard to win back an industry once it has been lost to a group that is ahead and dominating, and that US culture tends to favour leapfrogging to the next level, as it did with mobile phones, video conferencing and AI.
He said he would not take anything away from what the Chinese have done, but attributed their strength in silicon to about 25 years of very small manufacturing tweaks, with little inherent difference between PERC and TOPCon beyond small process changes. He said Silicon Valley has an edge over manufacturing-oriented players because it knows how to innovate, move faster and leapfrog in a new area.
Wharton assumes the ascendence of perovskite tandem products and speaks about it in Silicon Valley terms. He said the future from that point of view is fairly clear, with execution risk now the main factor, and that the company is moving out of the science realm into process engineering. He said there is a well-trodden path to becoming a multi-billion-dollar company and a leader in the space by scaling up, leaving only the work itself, which he called the fun part.
Wharton is scheduled to speak at the 2026 edition of the PV CellTech conference on 13-14 October in San Francisco, where innovations in solar PV manufacturing will be a mainstay of the agenda.
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