CPV Intelligence Brief 28 Feb – 13 March 2012

By Katherine Steiner Dicks on Mar 13, 2012

Heliotrop to supply over 70 MW Companies mentioned: Heliotrop, Commission de Régulation de l’Energie, DEGERenergie, GTM Research, Heritage Global Partners, and Energy Innovations

 

CPV Intelligence Brief 28 Feb – 13 March 2012

Heliotrop to supply over 70 MW 

France-based Heliotrop, a producer of III-V based solar cells, is growing market share in the hybrid solar power planet space by combining  CPV with traditional PV technologies.

The company has submitted several bids for a total of more than 70 MWp to be realised in France, the company said. The projects include more than 20 MW of 1024-sun Heliotrop CPV units.

Clients include major project Developers, Engineering, Procurement and Construction companies and Independent Power Producers.  The tender was organised by the French Power Regulatory body (Commission de Régulation de l’Energie).

'CPV must get costs down to $1.20 W by 2020'

GTM Research’s Brett Prior has projected that the CPV industry needs to get installed system cost down from today’s $3.08/W to $1.20 W by 2020 in order to remain competitive.

In a CPV roadmap report, Prior outlines cost reduction will derive from a host of variables including increasing cell efficiencies, lowering system losses as well as reducing the costs of the cells, inverter, module, tracker and install.

“Put it all together and it becomes plausible that they can get down to $1.20/W by 2020,” he said in a Solar Novus Today report.

DEGERenergie severs ties with CPV sector

Horb am Neckar-based solar tracking systems company, DEGERenergie will stop the production of its systems DEGERtraker 3000CT and 5000CT and not pursue sales activities in the CPV sector, the company announced this week.

The company’s VP of Sales & Marketing has some very strong opinions about the CPV sector’s ability to produce a profitable product line in the current market: “The increased yield which can be achieved with concentrator technology bears no reasonable proportion to the additional expenditure and does not justify the high development effort,” Michael Heck, Vice President Sales & Marketing at DEGERenergie, explained in a company statement.

While many in the CPV will not agree with Heck’s viewpoint, which could be viewed as short-term, he is of the opinion that CPV projects that have been repeatedly requested over the years have never proceeded beyond the status of prototypes at the producers of CPV modules. “A mass production of those modules does not become apparent,” he said.

The company will now focus on improving its trackers for the conventional PV sector: “A profitable business with these systems [CPV] is unlikely in the foreseeable future. We will keep on concentrating on the optimization of our systems on the basis of conventional photovoltaic technology. For this purpose DEGERenergie has allocated a research budget of 750,000 Euros for the next 18 months.”

Energy Innovations auctions assets

Heritage Global Partners will conduct an online-exclusive auction of assets previously owned by Energy Innovations, formerly a HCPV company that traded under the Sunflower technologies brand.

The auction will provide buyers an opportunity to purchase assets from a 60,000 square-foot assembly facility.

The auction of the Poway, California-based company will consist of non-core assets, including high-tech manufacturing equipment, office furnishings and support equipment, according to a Solar Industry Magazine report.