Selected for the Pre-Startup Package Programme
On 31 May 2022 the founding team of ACE Inventor was accepted into the Pre-Startup Package run by Korea's Ministry of SMEs and Startups, six months before the company itself existed on paper.
The work had begun at ACE Laboratory, opened in 2017 at Sookmyung Women's University. Nearly five years of research there into electrophoretic nanoparticle coating and water-based hydrogel electrolyte membranes became the company's founding capital.
The team's premise was that the constraint on solar was area, not efficiency. Conversion efficiency had climbed steadily, but at 15 to 25 kilograms per square metre, and locked into flat panels, modules could not go onto the buildings that needed them. Generation was pushed out to hillsides and farmland instead.
That diagnosis, reached before incorporation, set the technical roadmap. Replacing glass with composites to shed weight, and shaping modules to curved surfaces, became the company's development axis from the outset.
ACE Inventor was incorporated on 10 November of the same year.
ACE Inventor Inc., founded in November 2022, develops ultra-lightweight building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) modules. Its core technologies are a water-based hydrogel electrolyte membrane, electrophoretic large-area flexible electrode coating, and ultra-lightweight curved module design using FRP and ETFE composites. The company operates a 50 MW annual production line in Paltan-myeon, Hwaseong, Gyeonggi-do, and holds KS C 8577 BIPV module certification together with ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001. Its patent portfolio includes seven registered Korean patents and one registered US patent, with 23 applications filed in Korea and abroad. Contact info@aceivt.com · www.aceivt.com
Related coverage and sources