The concentration solar photovoltaic systems are rare. They are among the massive solar thermal plants built in the desert, and the Standard photovoltaic panels, concentrated PV panels used with lenses and curved mirrors to focus sunlight on solar cells, which can produce more power with less material – SolFocus says that one square centimeter cell can capture more than 500 square centimeters of sunlight. Configuration reduces the amount of silicon used in panels, and can significantly reduce the costs of the system.

SolFocus is two years old more or less and seeks to grow rapidly in an attempt to commercialize its technology. The company already sells products to selected customers for installations as test sites, such as the 50-kilowatt installation for the Institute’s Concentrated Photovoltaic Systems in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. Last July the company bought a solar tracking company InSpira based in Madrid to help the business scale reducing the cost of the crawlers.

The VentureWire report says SolFocus is now looking to increase funding for “growth and manufacturing.” Previously the company was funded by the New Association of Moser Baer India, David Gelbaum, MetaSystem Group, NGEN Partners and Yellowstone Capital.

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According to CNET the company will begin building a new facility in Oregon this year and plans to start with the release of solar cells in mid 2009.

The Intel executive vice president Arvind Sodhani said, “SpecraWatt is a great example of technology resulting from entrepreneurial efforts inside Intel. This is an important investment for Intel Capital in the growing clean technology sector “.

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The project will be built in the Lancaster area of California, is expected to provide energy in 2011 with a total of 105 MW of renewable solar energy in 2012, increasing to 245 MW in 2013. SCE buyer is currently the principal solar energy, buying more than 90% of products from USA.

“Solar is a great source of energy for California – and completely renewable,” said Stuart Hemphill, SCE vice president, Renewable and Alternative Energy.

“We rely on innovative companies such as eSolar for help in expanding our industry leading portfolio and to ensure access to the most promising technological solutions.

Each pre-fabricated module consists of several solar towers each associated with thousands of heliostats, or mirrors. The mirrors precisely attract the sun throughout the day and reflect light in a hallway at the top of the tower.

The concentrated light boils water in a central hallway, sending the steam to a traditional turbine to produce electricity.

Solar thermal technology is unique in eSolar, which uses smaller towers, mirrors mass produced smaller and more advanced tracking software, achieving economies of scale within a small footprint animal and easy connection to transmission lines.

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Solar producers measure their costs in terms of dollars per watt of energy produced, a formula is a combination of the cost of producing a module and its energy efficiency.

At this moment the best crystalline silicon modules can be sold from $ 3 to $ 4 per watt, First Solar can sell at about $ 2.40 per watt, price that the company expects to reduce. “I really have pushed the company to the threshold.” Said Travis Bradford, author of Solar Revolution. “They have a great technology”

But First Solar does not generate the largest buzz. That notoriety belongs to the enterprise Nanosolar, which shocked its competitors in December when it announced that it would be profitable to sell thin-film panels at $ 1 watt. This figure is the Holy Grail of sun, the point at which solar energy is generally cheaper than coal, without the help of subsidies.

The manager Martin Roscheisen main Nanosolar, who, like many solar kings, has its roots in Silicon Valley, says he can achieve radical cost savings by directly applying an ink composed of nano particles. Nanosolar cells Powersheets of wheel machines like pages of newspapers in print, on an average of several hundred feet per minute. Roscheisen, intensive Austrian said that the first 18 months of production of Nanosolar have already been purchased. “We share the market by 35% in the coming years,” he said. “The truth is that we can climb a lot more products for less.”

Roscheisen competitors, and puts them in a gentle way, doubt his claims, noting that the cost of raw material would be impossible to produce panels cost $ 1 per watt. “Of course I doubt,” he said. “Otherwise, their model would be a joke.”

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The first of Dr. Mills factory for mass production of solar parks will open in Las Vegas this year. Last week we speak with Australian politicians interested in Nevada, including the NSW Environment Minister, Verity Firth.

Power plants, designed in the laboratory of the University of Sydney reflect sunlight with mirrors to boil water and use steam turbines, generating electricity at a price not much higher than the coal-fired power station.

But, unlike some solar power systems can´t work when the sun is shining by storing heat in insulated chambers for rainy days, and continue to supply energy to the grid.

The technology is not complicated or particularly expensive, but being used in Nevada rather than Australia, because this is where the funding, said Dr. Mills.

“Not really talking about government money or subsidies, we are trying to establish a level playing field for technology,” said Dr. Mills.

“There is great debate in the U.S., but I do not think the debate in Australia.”

Dr Mills moved the headquarters of Ausra, the company founded by a USA last year because he realized that there were more banks willing to take risks in large-scale developments that directly feed the energy grid.

“We have shown that the system will compete with electricity from coal, especially when the carbon capture and storage is an extra cost,” said Mills.

“And obviously we have no fuel cost.”

“There have been regular questions from potential investors in Australia, but so far none has found a project on a scale that may begin to see a coal power stations being replaced by the green” Ausra has a pilot plant who now works and saves an estimated 4000 tons of carbon dioxide a year.

The government of Australia would like to see more schemes like this, but offers no special incentives at this time.

Ms Firth said it hoped to introduce the emissions trading scheme from the federal government and 20% renewable energy by 2020, close to the state fund for renewable energy, $ 40 million, Dr Mills encouraged persisting in a solar plant large scale in the state.

“Obviously we’d like to see this kind of industry in Australia, it is absolutely part of the long-term agenda,” said Firth.

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California utility PG & E Corp signed contracts with BrightSource in April to buy up to 900 megawatts of solar thermal in the coming years, enough energy to power 630,000 homes.

The move is part of a push from PG & E to meet the requirements of California for at least 20 percent of the energy supply comes from renewable energy by 2010.

A global race is under way to find energy alternatives to replace fossil fuels, and entrepreneurs are scrambling for a piece of clean energy market which analysts estimate is worth about $ 150 billion a year.

The development center BrightSource, with a tower 60 meters high and some 1,200 mirrors, is located in approximately 12,000 square meters of the Desert in Israel Nagev, chairman Arnold Goldman said.

BrightSource gave no financial details of the complex, but said that their systems are more cost-efficient than other solar power plants.

The new power tower, which is capable of generating 1.5 megawatts, will not produce electricity for public use, but to test technology to feed future plants, including a 100 megawatt plant in the Mojave Desert that is estimated to be completed 2011, said Kroizer.

The 100 megawatt plant will be 50 times larger than the central Negev.

The manager of BrightSource Woolard said competitors, such as Spanish building and energy group Acciona, still using technology similar to those used by BrightSource 20 years ago.

“The tower of power is based on technology, we see no serious competitor still in the area,” Woolard said in a conference in Jerusalem.

Higher Temperature Higher Pression

The towers of solar energy, which have been used for decades, used mirrors to reflect and intensify sunlight, it is almost like using a magnifying glass to start fire. Traditionally, the system contains long rows of mirrors bent to reach the 100 meters in length.

Sunlight is aimed at a boiler on top of the tower is hot enough so that water vapor is then passed through turbines which produce electricity.

The new power tower is surrounded by a system of smaller, flat mirrors, each with a system to track growth and reflect the sun more effectively than other systems, Goldman said.

“They require large quantities of electronics and controls and gears. The electronics industry has fallen so those costs can be achieved that today, “said Goldman. It also requires about one third of steel and cement, he said.

BrightSource mirrors reflect about 50 percent sunlight, while the Standard systems reflect 35-40 percent, Goldman said. As a result, the temperature and pressure in the boiler is higher and energy is produced more effectively.

“Pressures historic records have shown about 20 suns in the tower. It has a maximum of 600 suns, “said Goldman.

Woolard also said that the new power tower works at half the cost of solar photovoltaic plants because it produces twice the energy in the same amount of hours in the year.

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Flexible solar cells are nothing new. But investors have found the effort because of the flexible solar cells are on par with traditional silicon cells in terms of prices, however, have the potential to be applied to many more uses because of its flexibility and therefore have a varied target consumers. Ideas and products FTL is not limited to flat panels, but will be easily adapted to a wide variety of construction materials. And the industry has already proven its response. Regardless of the reasoning of investors, it’s nice to see investors put their wallets on the table for new solar technologies. With little money and some creative minds behind the technology, we can appreciate more quickly, which is what we all want.

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As solar panels energy are more common and bigger quantities are produced; they are intended to attract the attention of regulators. Many of the larger companies that manufacture solar panels have decided to replace the wave of regulation to voluntarily join and create the first large-scale project for the recycling of solar panels in Europe. The goal is to have a system developed at the end of this year.

“We are the first in Europe to establish such a system. And I can imagine that will become a model for other countries“said Karsten Wambach president of PV Cycle, who also heads SolarWorld’s Solar Material division.

The new PV Cycle association gathers about 17 solar companies including Q-Cells, SolarWorld, Sharp, Kyocera and First Solar, as well as the German solar industry association BSW and the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA).

However, the recycling of solar panels will be low at first. Solar cells have a lifespan of many decades if nothing unusual happens, and so far most of the recycled panels have been failures or damaged modules.

But these numbers will rise. It is estimated to be sent back about 16,000 tons in Europe in 2015, compared to 2,000 tons last year.

¿Convert old panels into new ones?

The cost of making a solar panel from a recycled one is almost the same as one made only from new material, but on the side of energy, it only needs one third of it. It is expected that if the volume of recycling increases, the cost will be an advantage.

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The plants cover an area of about 260 hectares, or 365 football fields, consisting of 1520 solar collectors and a stunning 364,800 mirrors that focus the sun’s rays into the collectors. This is the complement of 2,000 MW thermal power under development in the U.S., mostly located in the Mojave Desert. While other thermal towers use liquid sodium as a means of heat exchange, the design of action is based on a fuel system, which works like this:

“A liquid (fuel) flows through these pipes and has a very high temperature (400 º). This fluid is sent from the field to the solar energy unit in which heat is transferred to the heat exchanger, through which water flows and becomes steam. The steam turbine is connected to a generator that produces electricity. Following its transformation to high voltage it will be evacuated in a grid through a substation at Villanueva Del Rey (in the municipality of Écija). “

Solar thermal plants have the advantage of producing their peak power during the hottest part of the day when power demand is generally higher. However, the disadvantage is that it cannot actively generate energy at night and must rely on passive heat remaining in the system, or stored energy which can be released (underground storage of compressed air, flywheels energy storage, etc.).

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According to Dow, Global Solar was chosen as a partner because it is the only company able to provide copper diseleniur indium gallium (CIGS) materials used for the photovoltaic industry, which really meets the requirements of the UPS of having a 10% effectiveness, and as meeting the needs of a T. Dow CIGS is perfect for the type of BIPV technology that Dow is creating for its low cost and high efficiency.

Dow’s goal is to lower the price of solar panels, specifically BIPVs, making solar energy a competitive energy source, as builders and architects are free to decide how to position the solar roofing due to its inherent flexibility.

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