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As the solar energy industry enters the new decade, a College Park company looks to revolutionize one of the emerging technologies.

AccuStrata, a member of the Technology Advancement Program at the University of Maryland, is developing a system for optical monitoring of the process used to manufacture thin-film solar panels, which are more flexible and less costly than their crystalline silicon alternates.

The company received a $150,000 Phase One Department of Energy Small Business Innovation Research grant through the federal stimulus package in December, its third grant in six months.

Launched in 2003, with operations beginning in 2007, AccuStrata has six employees and has landed more than $1 million in funding from various sources. The company was selected as the Maryland Incubator Company of the Year for 2008 and was a finalist for 2009. The annual incubator of the year awards are sponsored by the Maryland Technology Development Corp., RSM McGladrey, the state Department of Business and Economic Development and Saul Ewing LLP.

"They're at the sweet spot for a lot of different things going on in the industry right now," said Dean Chang, director of the Ventures & Education programs at the university's Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute.

AccuStrata's technology allows manufacturers to spot problems that can occur in thin-film panel creation, in which layers of various materials are deposited onto the desired surface.

Currently, manufacturers can only test the panels' efficiency after they are made, forcing them to wait until the next batch to make any improvements. The lower quality panels are then discarded or sold as inferior. This process has resulted in thin-film panels having a 12 percent efficiency compared with the 22 percent of poly-silicon panels, said Monique Hanis, spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association in Washington, D.C.

"We hope this brings solar energy to parity with traditional energy," said Dr. George Atanasoff, founder, president and CTO of AccuStrata, referring to the system's potential impact on the solar industry. Energy from thin-film solar panels is expected to take up half of the total solar energy usage in 2013 when the industry will be worth $70 billion, he said.

The U.S. solar energy industry was valued at $2 billion in 2008, with the photovoltaic sector growing 81 percent, Hanis said. About 90 percent of today's solar cells are silicon, which forms panels by piecing cells together, Atanasoff said.

Since the thin-film process involves depositing the conductive materials itself, it can be used in places where hard panels cannot, lending itself to new designs, Hanis said. Thin-film technology appeared on the scene about four years ago and has been growing at a fast rate.

Atanasoff and Oscar von Bredow, COO of AccuStrata, said they hope to begin selling their technology this year.

Maryland special for IT despite the recession

AccuStrata is one example of how the state's IT industry has progressed despite the recession. From large government contractors fighting cybersecurity attacks to Web startups remaking how we use the Internet, this sector has been growing.

According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor, this sector of the economy — technically called "Computer Systems Design and Related Services" — added 4,000 jobs since October 2008, an increase of 6.5 percent.

During this time, a period when the state as a whole lost more than 50,000 jobs, only the government and health care sectors added more jobs than tech.

When compared with states with more robust IT sectors such as California and New York, Maryland is still ahead of the game. During the same period, the state added more jobs in this sector than every state except Virginia, which added 9,400. With more than 65,000 as of October 2009, Maryland has the fifth most tech jobs in the nation.

So why is Maryland's technology sector growing while the world around it is tumbling down? In a sentiment echoed by a bevy of industry insiders and public officials, Gov. Martin O'Malley said a key ingredient is people. Really smart people.

"We have one of the most highly skilled workforces of any state in the country," O'Malley said, speaking after a ribbon cutting this fall at Lockheed Martin's NexGen Cyber Innovation and Technology Center in Gaithersburg. "That is the asset."

According to a 2008 study by the Milken Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that focuses on economic development, Maryland's workforce is the most prepared to fill high-tech jobs in the nation. On a per capita basis, the state ranks first in the number of adults with doctorates and third for the percentage of graduate students studying science and engineering.

Teresa Carlson, a vice president at Microsoft, also attributes the growth to the presence of the federal government.

"The federal government's IT budget is not shrinking," said Carlson, who helps lead the tech giant's federal government division and works out of the company's new Chevy Chase offices. "It's still growing."

Whether in an entity like the National Security Agency or in one of the throngs of contractors throughout the state, government work draws many skilled people to the area.

Steve Kozak, executive director of the Greater Baltimore Tech Council, said this concentration of federal labs and contractors — and the workers inside them — pushes growth and innovation.

"It seems logical that when you put a lot of smart people there in the region, those smart people create great technologies," Kozak said.

As jobs disappear and the recession drags on, O'Malley thinks IT can help bring the state out of the present morass.

"This is one of those competitive assets that we have as a state that bodes very well for Maryland's ability to create jobs," O'Malley said, "not just today but tomorrow and in the years and months after that."

TEDCO helped AccuStrata

AccuStrata's seed funding came from private investors and through $75,000 from the Maryland Technology Develop Corp. in 2008. TEDCO is one of the first sources for startup company grants since many are deemed risky investment ventures at the early stages.

"This is the kind of company TEDCO is assigned to assist. We're excited and hope to see similar types of companies going forward," said John Wasilisin, acting president of TEDCO.

He said AccuStrata's ability to procure grants shows TEDCO's insight into the company's potential is proving to be on point. AccuStrata also received a National Science Foundation grant for $100,000 and an earlier Department of Energy grant this year.

Von Bredow and Atanasoff met while von Bredow was working on another start-up company. Von Bredow was interested in Atanasoff's application to monitor the process of creating flat-panel displays. Atanasoff soon realized the greater interest was in thin-film panel technology and reversed his focus.

Their goal is to make AccuStrata's monitoring system completely automated within the next two to three years.

"We want people to be able to make corrections on the fly," von Bredow said.

Chang said AccuStrata and the university have engaged in a mutually beneficial relationship since the company's arrival in 2008, in which AccuStrata has access to the research campus while the university's faculty and peers have the chance to work on industry problems outside of academics.

AccuStrata also remains one of the most active clients of the university's Maryland Intellectual Property Resource Center, which is within the incubator and offers free legal counseling and patent application assistance to startup companies.

"It's more carrying on the tradition of the significant successes of companies in [the Technology Advancement Program]," Chang said, referring to billion-dollar incubator graduates such as Digene, now part of Qiagen, and Martek Biosciences Corp. in Columbia.

Capital News Service Staff Writer Bobby McMahon contributed to this report.