The company also received its first purchase orders worth over 100 million euros for its automated solar panel manufacturing solution
Maana Electric SA, the tech disruption champion in green manufacturing for solar energy, announced on its fifth birthday a new agreement with the European Space Agency. The extension of the contract, supported by the LuxIMPULSE program of the Luxembourg Space Agency, will allow the company to perfect the breakthrough technologies required for its TerraBox system, to transform terrestrial sand and Lunar regolith into solar panels.
Maana Electric’s Founder and CEO, Joost van Oorschot, commented on the announcement: “We are extremely grateful to the Luxembourg Space Agency and the European Space Agency for their continuous support during the last five years. This new contract allows us to showcase entirely the technical viability of our revolutionary technologies to transform raw sand (and in the future, lunar regolith) into functional solar panels from local resources. This will be a real game-changer, moreover in the current context where it’s paramount to be energy independent by producing locally and doing it in an environmental-friendly way. That’s precisely what our company offers to the solar industry players.”
The company also announced proudly its first commercial purchase orders, representing revenues of more than 100 million euros from 2024 to 2026. These orders are related to Maana Electric’s FIS Machines, which are automated mobile factories to produce solar panels. The company has orders for more than 20 such machines.
Joost van Oorschot explained: “Each machine can produce a new solar panel every 6 minutes, leading up to a capacity of 35 MW per year per machine. It has been designed to be fully functional within a week from the start of its installation and requires no more than one training day for local operators. The machine comes with all the consumables required to operate it and Maana offers 24/7 monitoring and support. Our customers love the fact that no engineering or other specific skills are required since all processes are fully automated, and Maana provides the needed support to keep the downtime to a minimum. There is a clear market need from our customers to produce solar panels locally while also producing with healthy margins. Maana’s technology reduces the barriers to entry in this booming market, allowing anyone to rapidly set up solar panel production capacity without needing specific production know-how. Finally, the machine is flexible enough to permit the production of customized solar panels, a growing trend in the market.”
Maana Electric is currently in discussions with many other solar energy developers, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, to deploy many more machines in the coming years.
About Maana Electric
Maana Electric develops green technologies over the entire value chain of solar panel manufacturing. Stemming from its space industry background, the company applies its system engineering approach to solve major problems across the entire solar supply chain. Their key technologies are green manufacturing processes for solar panels, cells, and silicon production to make the most sustainable and ESG-compliant solar products on the market.
The company’s ultimate goal is to develop its TerraBox system, capable of producing solar panels anywhere in the world, using only In Situ Resources (ISRU). ISRU means using only the locally available resources to produce goods. Maana Electric’s tech chain allows it to produce solar panels using only impure sand feedstocks. More info at www.maanaelectric.com