news + press
From powering the Red Cross to Coldplay concerts
March 3, 2025 | Andrew Scott
Coldplay’s performance powered by Pvilion. Photo courtesy of Pvilion
INDUSTRY CITY — Colin Touhey, co-founder of Pvilion and lifelong Park Sloper, believes solar can be our main energy source, not just because of how fast it’s growing but also because of how much cheaper it is than fossil fuels. Solar costs have dropped 90% in the last decade. And, if part of an efficient system of batteries and other renewables, as California has proven, solar can replace fossil fuels entirely.
But, one of the restrictions of solar panels is their confinement to, well, panels. To push the boundaries of solar, Pvilion pioneers products with solar cells integrated into fabric — right here in Brooklyn.
The Eagle met with Touhey and the team in Sunset Park overlooking Gowanus Bay. “Industry City was able to find us a happy medium between a nice quality office and manufacturing space — a warehouse, freight trucks — it’s a hard thing to find in Brooklyn,” he said, stressing his appreciation for Blocpower, the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce and the job training benefits of being in Brooklyn. “It’s not just talk; it’s really happening.”
Pvilion offers adaptable, lightweight solar power for everything from disaster relief shelters to concert tours, reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
Half of its products are temporary military relocatable structures and half focus on landscape architecture.
The urgent necessity of alternative power
The 2016 Paris Agreement, which President “Drill, baby, drill” Trump recently pulled out of, claimed to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels” when permafrost thaws, releasing more greenhouse gases.
In 2018, experts predicted we might cross 1.5 degrees C between 2030-2052. A 2023 assessment moved the timeline up to 2021-2040. But just last year, we reached a new 1.6 degrees C record.
New research using AI shows a very high likelihood of 2.0 degrees of warming for most of the globe by 2040 and 3.0 degrees C by mid-century. Even if we aggressively reduce emissions, 76.5% of Earth will see 3.0 degrees C by 2100.
At this point, we’ll have to start the process of decarbonization.
It’s evidently becoming difficult to keep track of the factors contributing to climate change. Global forests emitted more than they absorbed in 2023. Last year, 41% of the Arctic, normally a carbon sink, became a carbon source, mostly from Alaskan permafrost thaw.
Globally, emissions increased by 2% due to the absence of legislation. Under Biden, the U.S. dropped emissions by a whopping 0.2% last year, but they likely will increase under Trump, who recently ordered the removal of the climate change page from the EPA’s website.
With ever-increasing energy demands from technologies like cryptocurrency mining and AI, we need more alternative energy options. That’s where Pvilion comes in with a highly adaptable solution.
What exactly can solar fabric do?
There’s a lot you can do with solar cells integrated into fabric. Traditional solar panels are large slabs of glass and metal weighing around 80 pounds. “This is five times bigger and weighs 50 pounds. Two people can pop this up,” Touhey told the Eagle, holding a folded accordion solar array.
Because it’s flexible, the chemistry is a little different, but Touhey says Pvillion’s solar fabric functions just as well as its more cumbersome counterpart. Fashioning a solar fabric hat could technically charge your phone. “The surface area to charge a cell phone is about an 8 ½” by 11” piece of paper.”
The company specializes in 10 forms of tents, including thinner options that fold and more rigid ones. The most popular mass-produced application robotically self-assembles, providing shelter and power.
I followed Touhey into a military-grade tent with a floor, walls, windows, doors, lights, plugs and an HVAC unit — all built into a system that unfolds at the push of a button from a pneumatic tire cart housing the battery. Together, the entire self-sustaining package weighs hundreds of pounds, but a motor in the cart makes it easy to trolley off-road. The package contains a lithium iron phosphate battery (LFP) system that automatically regulates when to expend energy or charge.
LFPs, the second most popular type of lithium-ion battery after lithium nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries, hold less energy than NMCs but expend it faster and charge faster. They’re generally better for the environment due to the absence of cobalt, and they’re safer, allowing for airdrop, which is essential for Pvilion.
The tents are pivotal for disaster relief and humanitarian aid. Pvillion works with Air Force contingency response teams — the first to arrive at a disaster and prepare semi-permanent infrastructure for the Red Cross. “If you go to the middle of the desert and you need 10 tents, the amount of fuel you have to bring in is insane,” Touhey clarified, “you’re running generators the entire time on diesel fuel, so the idea that you can go to zero is pretty meaningful for them.”
Pvilion has provided refugee tents for displaced Ukrainians in Poland, but they also collaborated with Tommy Hilfiger on two limited edition solar-powered jackets that can charge a tablet.
For the last two years, Pvilion has been working on a rental and service program specifically for the five boroughs, but renting is also part of their regular product line.
One of their recent clients was Coldplay. With a fabric solar array in the empty seats behind the stage, Pvilion supplied a significant portion of the band’s electricity, which would have otherwise been all diesel fuel. “Cause they don’t get power from the stadium,” Touhey told the Eagle, “They have to power 100% of their stuff even though they’re in a permanent stadium.”
Because it was a pilot program, diesel supplemented the array, but Pvilion is confident that a larger battery system would allow performers touring stadiums to cut gas completely. “It’s just a matter of cost and scale.”
Pvillion also has semi-permanent canopies at the New York Botanical Garden that can be moved around. The canopies can charge anything from food trucks to farmers’ market point-of-sale machines to cell phones. They crafted a solar carport, about the size of four parking spots, that can power four car chargers, as well as a cafe trellis for Google. For Home Depot, Pvillion developed solar awnings that can charge heavy equipment.
The first solar fabric
Pvillion co-founder Robert Lerner got involved with using fabrics as a substrate for solar cells in the mid-90s.
Lerner was working at FTL Design Engineering when Cooper Hewit hired the firm to do an experimental design for an exhibit on the history of solar energy. Kiss & Cathcart, another design firm hired to collaborate with FTL on the exhibit, created a pavilion with semitransparent amorphous silicon solar panels laminated into glass.
Lerner and his team asked Kiss & Cathcart if they could use the same solar cells to create a portable tent, and with some funding from the New York State Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), it became the world’s first solar fabric.
The U.S. Army eventually contacted them after seeing it in a magazine and awarded the group a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract with Kiss & Cathcart, who got most of the money to develop the solar cells, which were uncommon at the time.
Their first product was called The Power of Shade: a tent that went over other tents, reducing the heat load on the inner tent while generating electronic power.
“The research and development process [with the military] is so slow that we moved to the private sector,” Touhey added. After going from SBIR funding to NYSERDA funding, they got some private investors and moved into the commercial market. The team split into FTL Solar — when Touhey joined — before finally forming Pvilion.
Around 2019, Pvillion went back to the military through a program in the Air Force for small businesses with commercial products called AFWERX, securing $75,000 to meet with people for 3 months. “They pay you to travel around and ask people, ‘What would you use this for?’” One person might want it for air traffic control towers and another for air conditioning in a tent.
After submitting a report, Touhey said, “We’re going to build these prototypes to prove this technology we developed for the New York Botanical Gardens works for air traffic control towers.”
Looking forward
In the near future, Pvilion will supply New York State with portable solar charging stations for electric construction and agriculture equipment. It’s technically two programs, one replacing generators on construction sites here in Brooklyn and the other doing the same for farming upstate.
Electric industrial and construction are essential, but clean charging infrastructure is necessary. “Otherwise, you’re just using a diesel generator to charge an electric bulldozer. That’s not really solving your problem.” Touhey hopes to partner with some bigger companies on this.
There are countless potential applications of solar fabric. Floating solar came up. Even for large buildings that can’t handle the weight of solar panels, Pvilion offers something that weighs 10 times less. “There are a lot of buildings where the roofs and the actual structures themselves are fabric,” Touhey said, mentioning cattle barns, salt sheds, and an Accu-Steel-style tent just outside.
He gestured out the window to a chainlink construction fence with a privacy screen, “All of that fence is fabric, right? Solarize that, you’re good — you know?”
“There’s free energy all over the world,” Touhey went on, “The idea that any piece of fabric that’s getting hit by the sun is an opportunity to generate electricity was pretty intriguing to me … It’s a big opportunity that is untapped.”
To view the original article, click here.
