Solec-Solar Energy Corp

SOLEC-Solar Energy Corporation was incorporated in 1974 as a direct response to the 1973 Oil Crisis. The oil embargo triggered sharp rises in energy prices and new solutions were needed to find alternative sources of clean, renewable domestic energy production. From modest beginnings in a small farm building on the outskirts of Princeton, NJ, SOLEC set out to be the leader in solar thermal and energy conservation technologies. During the first few years of research and development, SOLEC sold its first product, an inclinometer (used to show the installation angle for solar panels). By selling several thousand of these, SOLEC was able to modestly offset research expenditures as it brought forward a series of new patent claims for an innovative solar collector design. Trombe Wall Trombe wall installation The new collector would be manufactured using glass tubes and the only methods for applying selective surfaces at that time were by vacuum or chemical vapor deposition, both quite costly procedures. Because of its own need for low cost selective surfaces for its collectors, SOLEC started developing inexpensive spray-applied optical coatings that could perform as well as the chemical or vacuum deposited surfaces. By 1977, the same year patents were filed for its collector design, SOLEC was running its first experimental batches of SOLKOTE Selective Solar Coating. The following year SOLEC started experimenting with low-emissivity coatings as a way to reduce the emissivity of the glass on which the SOLKOTE was to be applied.

The combination of the two coatings (the high absorption of the SOLKOTE over the LO/MIT low emissivity base coat) provided the selective surface on glass that SOLEC was looking for. In 1979, patent #4,155,346 was issued to Robert Aresty of SOLEC for a “Solar Energy Collector”. At the time, it was the largest patent issued to a US citizen (25 claims) in the solar field. The next year SOLEC designed and marketed a new service called “SOLCOST by SOLEC” a computerized design service for architects, builders and homeowners to aide in the sizing of solar thermal systems. Customers would submit detailed load and location data and the sophisticated program would process the information through Boeing’s supercomputers and return a result in 2 day’s time for just $25. The advent of the desktop computer, however, made this a short-lived venture. By 1981, SOLEC was supplying other US collector manufacturers with its SOLKOTE coating technology and moved to its first full-scale coating production site in Pennington, NJ, in the basement of an old liquor distillery. The following year, SOLEC exhibited at the World Solar Congress in Hamburg, Germany, and secured its first European SOLKOTE customer. It was around this time that the lucrative market for spray-applied solar coatings started to take off and SOLEC shelved its interests in vacuum tube collector manufacturing to focus solely on coatings and supplying the rest of the industry with its unique spray-applied technology. This coincided with a big push from the Carter administration for domestic solar incentives and rebates.