The cost of solar panels is dropping exponentially, and solar power is now 80% cheaper than it was in 2010. A new startup plans to make it even more of a threat to fossil fuels, while also making panels much more efficient. Using a particle accelerator—a machine that speeds up sub-atomic particles to nearly the speed of light—Rayton Solar slices up ultra-precise pieces of silicon, the key material used to make most solar panels. In typical manufacturing, a clunky cutting process wastes much of the material. When making a 200 micron-thick wafer of silicon, another 200 microns of the material ends up as sawdust. The new patented process eliminates that waste. "Once you have a certain energy level of the particle and you shoot it at a block of silicon, it will penetrate at a certain depth into that silicon," says Andrew Yakub, Rayton Solar's 29-year-old CEO. "That's how we do our cutting at such a precise depth." The new panels are 25% more efficient.