Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to talk to you.
I'll tell you a little about Day4 Energy to begin with, and then make some other comments.
We're in the business of manufacturing a new type of solar panel. It performs better and opens the door to new innovations in that field. We're evolving into a supplier of solar electric generation systems. The technology is a new way of interconnecting two photovoltaic cells to make a marked improvement in the performance of the panel. But more importantly, this technology also allows us to take the next step in cell design to make the cells perform better.
The company's major objective is to move solar energy toward cost parity with the grid. This is an important issue, because, as we all know here, we are now living in what will become known as the energy century. Human beings will change the way they generate the energy that sits at the basis of their economy.
We started in 2002. We began this year with a capacity of 12 megawatts annual output. We will be at 40 megawatts by the middle of July, and at 90 megawatts by the end of the year. We're sold out for this year.
Our major market is in Europe, with 90% of our business there, dominated by Germany. We already have an order booked with 55 megawatts for 2009, and one for 66 megawatts in 2010. The company is obviously growing very fast.
Since I joined the renewable energy business--I came from aerospace, as some of you may know--I've learned that here in British Columbia we have a very strong knowledge base in renewable energy, but it's all located in pretty small companies. Zantrex, Carmanah, and Day4 are the big ones. The rest are pretty small. If you look at renewable energy and the markets that'll be created for it, I think it's a huge opportunity for Canada. We can discuss ways the government can influence that during the question period.
I have been for around a while, as most of you probably know. I served on almost all of the science and technology advisory gizmos that various governments have dreamed up over the years--mostly during the Trudeau and Mulroney administrations. I gave up in the early nineties, saying “I've done my bit, and nobody listens anyway”.
I saw some good policies come, and I also saw them go. I saw some schemes that were good, and some that weren't. I saw some good ones get wrecked, and I saw some not-so-good ones persist. They change names every once in a while.
I'm an engineer by training, and over the years I've learned that Canadians are the best engineers in the world. I think the reason for it is that our resources are so small. You have to be clever to do anything with small resources. But as a group of people, our ability to exploit that talent is dismal. We don't seem to be able to generate much wealth from the wonderful things we can do.
With that, I pass the floor back to you.