Could a fob-size power chip supercharge solar energy — and everything else? One B.C. start-up thinks so

It started as a brainstorm by three University of British Columbia (UBC) graduate students mulling how to build a better e-bike charger.

But the micro-power converter that emerged from those early musings has the potential to supercharge the global energy transition, transforming the design of solar and wind farms, battery banks, electric vehicles (EVs) and data centres — and could help change the economics of clean power for remote communities that depend on diesel today.

The technology developed by Vancouver-based Daanaa, the start-up founded in 2018 by Soroush Dehghani, Javad Shariatzadeh and Ehsan Hadizadeh, is called a Power Transaction Unit (PTU).

It looks like a simple rectangular piece of moulded plastic, a little larger than a key-fob. Yet the software it houses can manage any combination of complex power conversion functions to seamlessly link up sources of electricity generation, storage and distribution, with minimal energy loss, the company says. 

The PTU works a magnitude faster than current systems—and wirelessly—without losing power when increasing voltage from generation to use in devices connected to the electrical grid.

“We want to provide a plug-and-play environment for the global power system,” Daanaa CEO Udi Daon, a veteran tech entrepreneur who joined the company a year after it launched, told Canada’s National Observer. 

One-step power transfer

The PTU is something like a Swiss Army knife for renewable power projects.

In a typical large solar farm, photovoltaic (PV) panels contain many cells connected in a series. But the whole panel only works as well as its weakest cell. To get the most electricity from a solar farm, power management systems switch between as many as 12 different functions. This process uses a lot of energy and often creates inefficiencies.

Adding the chip to PV panels allows a solar farm to combine all these power conversion tasks into a single process. This improves efficiency by handling common issues like faulty cells or reduced energy when clouds cast shadows on the panels.

All this can greatly increase the working hours when a solar plant delivers power to the grid—and significantly boost a solar farm's total output, according to Daanaa’s research published by the IEEE, an international technical certification body.

“A significant increase in energy harvest potential is observed in comparing conventional PV panels with proposed Daanaa-enabled panels,” the article said, noting power output showed an improvement of up to 42 per cent.

When added to any type of battery, the PTU could greatly improve charging cycles and lower running costs. The technology could also make the economics of solar-fueled electric cars and trucks a reality, or ramp-up the efficiency of power-hungry data centres, the company says.

"We want to provide a plug-and-play environment for the global power system” Daanaa CEO Udi Daon

"The power transaction is done for you in one step using our PTU, rather than having to have 8 to 12 functions needing a range of technologies from as many companies to do the same,” said Daon.

"Power transactions require complex electronics and algorithms,” he added. "Our programmable PTU does it in a single step, at an ultra-high conversion ratio and at high efficiency.”

This combination of improved conversion and efficiency could change attitudes toward a nationwide clean energy network — a hotly-debated topic as U.S. tariffs raise concerns about Canada's energy independence — down to microgrids for the home or workplace, including connecting to electric vehicles as “rolling batteries”.

Daanaa has signed confidentiality agreements with a number of large industrial manufacturers and suppliers in the solar and auto sectors that are sizing up the PTU chip for a variety of technology "performance enhancement" projects, said Daon.

The company has come a long way from its early days when six people worked out of a basement on the UBC campus.  

“Today we are four times the size,” Alexandra Kutilin, Daanaa’s director of operations, said in accepting the BC Tech Association award for start-up company of 2024.

Daanaa is seeking further funding after it raised US$7 million in 2021 for product development and to commercialize its technology. That first round of funding was led by Colorado-based VoLo Earth Ventures, a venture capital (VC) outfit that invests in the clean economy technologies.

"To some [Daana's PTU] is viewed as a bit of a 'miracle' chip," VoLo managing partner Kareem Dabbagh told Canada's National Observer. "The most exciting thing is the applicability across verticals — solar, automotive, batteries... data centres are next. There are so many applications that involve complex power transactions where the technology can thrive. "

"The investment case was clear," he added, referring to the vetting processing undertaken by the VC to validate the technology. VoLo is now supporting a second-round funding drive that is expected to take Daanaa's PTU into commercialization.

"Start with building a better solar cell, but from there, optimize for specific large multi-billion-dollar verticals," said Dabbagh. "My mind did start racing when I began to consider future concepts for the technology. The market is massive."

Daon said the company aims to start mass-producing PTUs before the end of the decade through licensed manufacturers for the solar power sector, from utility-scale projects to rooftop residential installations — and in the not-too-distant future for PV-powered cars and trucks. PTU applications in other spaces, including energy storage and data centres, could follow. 

“Really for any application you can think of,” he said.

The PTU could disrupt the energy transition, said Tony Dhaliwal, senior director of projects at Foresight Canada, a business development platform to accelerate cleantech projects.

"This is an unprecedented simplification of the power system. A fundamental change to the way we see power conversion, replacing multiple devices with one,” he told Canada’s National Observer.

A more than 40 per cent improvement in production from a solar farm “would be a new benchmark for industry," Dhaliwal said, when considering the current low-20s per cent efficiency rate that today's PV panels deliver because of limitations in cell technology.

Daanaa was among Foresight's top 50 venture companies this year, chosen by an independent panel of judges "based on their investability, potential environmental and employment impact, and probability of success," he said.

The chip's plug-and-play design could cut costs by streamlining the engineering and installation of a solar farm. More widely, it could help run PV panels on buildings, or increase the driving distance of electric cars and trucks, easing 'range anxiety,' he said.

Daanaa imagines a future where the PTU could be built into electric vehicles that run on power from solar panels integrated into the curved surfaces of the car's body.

"There’s no limit to what this technology could mean to the speed of energy transition," Dhaliwal said.

"Democratizing" power technology

Daanaa believes its technology could help bring higher-efficiency renewables to remote communities that rely on expensive, high-polluting fossil fuels to power homes and businesses.

“Using diesel is like siphoning money out of their pockets and into someone else’s — namely, the fossil fuel industry. These communities should be self-energizing,” said Daon.

“I think our technology would democratize the energy transition,” he added.

Efficiency is a critical issue for the global energy transition as electricity demand surges in the coming years and more renewable sources of power are added to overstretched grids.

"We need new solutions. Developing and electrifying our grids is not going to get us the capacity we need in a world of renewable energy and electric vehicles," Dhaliwal said. "We have to find ways of exponentially improving the efficiency side of things.”

"The system on a chip could give us one of those,” he said of Daanaa’s technology.

Daon said disruptive technologies can do more for the energy transition than incremental changes, but will meet resistance. 

"We're OK with that, showing that the impossible is possible,” he said.

If they can bring the chip technology to market, Daanaa — a Farsi word for “wise” — would certainly live up to its name.