Today, Swift Solar is proud to announce a major strategic partnership with Eni Plenitude, the renewable energy arm of Eni, one of the world's largest integrated energy companies with major investments in the energy transition. Together, we are launching the first phase of a long-term pilot program to validate Swift’s high-efficiency perovskite tandem technology at utility scale—a key milestone on our path toward a potential long-term supply arrangement with Eni Plenitude.
Eni will pilot Swift’s tandem modules at a utility-scale solar plant under true utility-scale operating conditions.
Our partnership with Eni reflects growing industry confidence in our technology, and is yet another signal that perovskites are the future of solar. With over 4 GW of solar installed globally and a recent growth partnership with Ares Management Corporation, Eni Plenitude will offer invaluable support in proving our technology and scaling up manufacturing to establish our place in the utility-scale market—solar’s largest, highest-value, and most competitive segment.
The Massive Utility-Scale Solar Opportunity
Utility-scale solar represents a huge and growing global opportunity. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), from 2010 to 2016, the world added 168 GW of utility-scale capacity. Over the next six years, that number quadrupled. In the last year alone, we saw 182 GW of new utility-scale capacity come online—and between 2024 and 2030, the IEA projects the world will have deployed roughly 2,550 GW.
That’s mainly the result of how quickly utility-scale solar projects can deploy, and the fact that solar is one of the cheapest forms of energy.
In the US, natural gas plants take around three years to build and bring online—after waiting up to seven years for a gas-fired turbine, which is raising the cost to build those plants. Utility-scale solar, on the other hand, needs less than two years to build. That’s faster than virtually any other energy source.
No wonder solar accounted for 60% of new additions to the US grid last year. Add in wind, batteries, and nuclear, and you get 96% of all new capacity.
With electricity demand growing around the world—thanks to a combination of AI data center additions, hotter summers, EV adoption, and electrified manufacturing—utility-scale solar offers the clearest path to meeting demand as quickly as possible.
Perovskites Will Fuel the Next Wave of Utility-Scale Solar
The demand for utility-scale solar means we’re now at the point where hundreds of millions of solar panels are deployed in new utility-scale projects each year. Swift’s perovskite tandem technology can significantly expand this buildout, thanks to Swift’s module efficiencies reaching 28% and higher—delivering 40% more power in the same project footprint.
This is a massive, once-in-a-generation technical leap that materially lowers the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and anchors solar’s long-term dominance. It’s truly game changing.
As an example, if we built all the utility-scale solar projects currently in the interconnection queue here in the US with perovskite tandem modules, we’d add roughly 1.5 TW of new, lower-LCOE solar capacity to the grid.
Additionally, repowering existing solar projects represents one of the largest overlooked opportunities in US clean energy—hundreds of projects built prior to 2015 are now entering upgrade cycles. Using Swift’s perovskite tandem modules to repower, those projects will be able to reduce their footprint for the same amount of power, while freeing up project-ready space for >40% new solar additions and/or battery storage—deploying new power faster.
Not Just Eni Partnership
We can’t think of a better partner to begin realizing the utility-scale potential of our perovskite solar technology than Eni.
Not only do we have a longstanding relationship with the company through their corporate venture capital arm, Eni Next—a major strategic investor in Swift Solar since 2023—but we share a vision of a world powered increasingly by solar, and a commitment to building up America’s solar manufacturing muscle.
Through our partnership, we’ll be using Eni Plenitude's solar facilities to demonstrate the enormous improvements we’ve made in the performance and durability of our perovskite tandem solar technology—unlocking new, bankable value for utility-scale projects.
Evaluating equipment and validating our results under utility-scale conditions will deepen our credibility as we begin piloting with other major developers lining up to partner with us. And over the next 24 months, as we bring our US manufacturing facility online, we’ll be ready to support our developer partners and help Eni reach its goal of deploying 15 GW of renewable capacity by 2030.
The future of solar is swiftly approaching—and we are leading the way.
