Ralph Romero Email & Phone Number

489 Fifth Avenue, 14th Floor, New York, New York 10017 USA

489 Fifth Avenue, 14th Floor; New York, NY 10017, USA

Dr. Romero leads the Independent Assessment of Novel Technologies practice at Black & Veatch Management Consulting.

Williamsburg, VA

Consultant to domestic and international photovoltaic equipment manufacturers, investors and lenders in the areas of technology design, performance and reliability assessment, manufacturing, project evaluation, and operations management, among others.

• Led the effort to identify new thin film device designs and manufacturing technologies to achieve power conversion efficiencies beyond 10%.
• Provided up-to-date analysis of the competition and of the state of the PV industry to corporate management.

• Led the efforts that established the root cause of the electrical arcing seen in First Solar thin film photovoltaic modules in the field, and worked on a solution that has the potential of saving over $500,000 per.
• Expanded the array of failure analysis techniques at First Solar to include module electroluminescence and accelerated environmental testing with bias.

• Led the successful introduction of heat-strengthened glass into amorphous silicon (aSi) thin film photovoltaic module manufacturing process. This resulted in potential savings of over $400,000 per annum in reduced.
• Directed the project that established the causes and eliminated thin film corrosion in aSi modules. This breakthrough substantially improved the reliability and marketability of the aSi module.

• Responsible for plant operations, reporting directly to the CEO.
• Led the successful startup of the largest thin film PV plant in the world located at Toano, Virginia, USA.

Responsible for day-to-day project operations. Led the engineering teams at Newtown, Pennsylvania, USA that developed the technology and equipment for the Toano, Virginia, USA plant.

• Managed the company’s engineering, process development, manufacturing, QA/QC, and safety and compliance activities at three sites (Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey, USA, and Fairfield, California, USA). Direct report.
• Led the successful development of technology and equipment for the 10 MW amorphous silicon production facility at Fairfield, California, USA. This was, at the time, the largest thin film PV plant in the world.

Ph.D., Physics

M.S., Physics

M.S. in Physics, School of Physics, Havana University, Havana, Cuba, 1977 •Concentration: Solid State Physics

B.S., Physics