Here Comes the Sun
John MacDonald, co-founder of local high-tech pioneer MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA), and Leonid Rubin, former biophysics professor at Moscow State University and one of Russia’s former top physicists, were supposed to be long retired by now. After decades of success in business and academia, respectively, both should be basking in former glories. And yet here they are, camped out in a soulless business park in deepest, darkest Burnaby, hard at work on yet another business venture. It appears you can’t keep a good entrepreneur down – or, at least, unemployed.
It was almost eight years ago that MacDonald, 72, and Rubin, 68, first sat down in a Moscow café to discuss a possible venture together; a month later, Day4 Energy Inc. – a manufacturer of photovoltaic (PV) modules used in solar panels – was born. Based on technology designed by Rubin, the 48 MC solar module, Day4’s flagship product, is said to be more efficient than competing systems – a claim that has some backing in the industry. The California Energy Commission ranked Day4’s technology among the top five per cent of most efficient crystalline silicon products that qualify under the state’s rebate program, while Germany’s Albstadt-Sigmaringen University, which performed independent testing of Day4’s solar panels under various weather conditions, called it “one of the best modules we have observed, offering high quality and precise manufacturing.”
Here at home, Day4 was named 2008 Emerging Company of the Year by the B.C. Technology Industry Association this past June for its strategy and “market promise.” The company has experienced significant growth in its first year as a public enterprise: raising more than $100 million from its initial public offering and expanding from a startup production capacity of 12 megawatts (a standard measure in the PV industry) to just shy of 100 megawatts by the end of 2008. While still considered an emerging player, Day4 is thought to have a great deal of potential in a world increasingly reliant on renewable energy. “Renewable energy will be the way humankind derives its energy, and it will happen this century,” predicts MacDonald. “I may not be around when it happens, but I see it coming.”
The name Day4 Energy is a biblical reference to the seven days it supposedly took God to create the universe: on the fourth day, as the story goes, He made the sun. “It was Leonid’s idea,” explains MacDonald. “I remember saying to him that if the name of the company is based on the Book of Genesis, we can’t go far wrong. At least three religions agree on that one page.” MacDonald, Day4’s chair and CEO, relates the anecdote from his second-storey office overlooking a parking lot outlined by a few newly planted trees and shrubs. His modest space is cluttered with files, Day4 pamphlets and solar industry trade magazines.
MacDonald and Rubin (Day4’s vice-president and chief technology officer) originally met through their sons, George Rubin and Neil MacDonald, who were colleagues in the 1990s at Vancouver investment bank Goepel McDermid Inc. (now Raymond James Holdings Canada Inc.) and later at Yorkton Securities. The four men would often meet for long dinners when Leonid Rubin was visiting Vancouver from Moscow, but it wasn’t until John MacDonald paid a return visit to the Russian capital (on business, representing Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation) that the two men first talked about starting their own company. MacDonald describes that visit as “a drink from the technological firehose.” Rubin took him around the city and showed him a handful of innovative high-tech ventures, ranging from laser technology that could break glass to one that could improve the efficiency of solar panels. When asked which of the ideas he thought would make a good business, MacDonald said the PV technology.
The proprietary technology at the heart of Day4’s business is designed to address weaknesses in existing solar panels. Day4 claims to be able to reduce the resistance of the standard PV cell and to create higher power output, thus creating a more efficient solar panel. (The company also claims its product is more attractive than standard solar panels.) The technology is used in both residential and commercial buildings – mostly in Europe, with about 90 per cent of Day4’s recent business coming from Germany (where a so-called “feed-in tariff” law gives customers tax breaks for using solar-generated electricity). Some of Day4’s dozen or so competitors in the burgeoning solar panel industry include Aleo Solar, Canadian Solar and Suntech – each of whom boasts annual revenues of more than $300 million, which is nearly triple Day4’s current sales.
MacDonald, however, sees a market share for Day4 well beyond its current stake. Indeed, he makes clear that he wouldn’t be involved in the company otherwise and predicts that Day4, whose market capitalization at press time was about $28 million, will someday be bigger than MDA (whose market cap is around $870 million). “When I realized what Leonid had developed could make a significant advance in photovoltaic technology, I became fascinated,” says MacDonald, gesturing to a building under construction down the street that will soon serve as expanded Day4 production facilities. “Getting solar energy into the mainstream of electrical generation – that’s what attracted me to this, to going back to work full time.”
It’s MacDonald’s visionary reputation and his success at MDA that gives many people hope for Day4. The Prince Rupert native, who spent his teenage years fixing radios on fishing boats, knew from an early age that he wanted to be an engineer. After studying electrical engineering at UBC, he went on to get both a master’s degree and doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He later returned to UBC to teach before eventually leaving the ivory tower for the business world, bringing a few of his best students along with him.
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