Who We Are
Independent. Applied. Hands-on.
Sunstrike Optics LLC is an independent research and engineering company focused on concentrating solar systems, photovoltaic monitoring, and the custom instrumentation needed to make both work in the real world.
We're a small team. We design, build, test, and iterate on hardware ourselves — from optical bench setups and solar furnace prototypes to microprocessor-based data loggers and the 3D-printed enclosures that house them. We do this work because we think it matters, and because there's a gap between what large institutions pursue and what smaller-scale, cost-effective solar technology can accomplish.
We depend on collaboration — with researchers, educators, students, and partner organizations — and we welcome it.
Why This Work
The gap we're trying to close
High-quality solar research tools are expensive. Concentrating solar systems at a scale useful for community or institutional applications are largely unexplored outside of large capital projects. And the instrumentation needed to properly characterize PV and thermal systems often costs more than the systems themselves.
We believe that gap can be closed with careful engineering, accessible fabrication methods like 3D printing and laser cutting, and open collaboration. Our work is oriented toward educational institutions, research groups, and community-scale applications — places where cost-effective, technically rigorous tools can have real impact.
This thinking also connects us to broader conversations about energy transition, community resilience, and what appropriate-scale technology looks like in a resource-constrained future.
How We Work
What guides our approach
Build it. Test it. Measure it.
We validate what we build. Every system we design is paired with instrumentation to characterize its performance — we don't ship or publish work we haven't measured.
Cost-effective without cutting corners
We look for the minimum complexity that solves the real problem. Accessible doesn't mean imprecise — it means designed carefully enough that it doesn't need to be expensive.
Open to collaboration
We work with universities, research organizations, and individuals. If you're doing related work and see potential for overlap, we want to hear about it.
Community scale matters
Much of our work is oriented toward applications that communities and institutions can deploy and operate — not just laboratory demonstrations or utility-scale infrastructure.
Our Flagship Initiative
Supporting SHINE
SHINE — Solar Harvesting Innovations for New Ecosystems — is a collaborative research and community initiative that Sunstrike Optics supports and contributes to technically. SHINE focuses specifically on concentrating solar furnaces and their potential for high-temperature processing applications including materials work, fabrication, and community-scale thermal applications.
Much of our concentrating solar work is done in the context of SHINE, and students and collaborators working through SHINE are a primary audience for the tools and systems we develop.