Concentrated PV

Intelligence Brief 15 – 29 March Companies and organisations mentioned include: Chevron Technology Ventures Chevon Mining Inc. Concentrix Solar SolFocus Victor Valley College OPDE US Department of Energy

Intelligence Brief

 15 – 29 March Companies and organisations mentioned include: Chevron Technology Ventures Chevon Mining Inc. Concentrix Solar SolFocus Victor Valley College OPDE US Department of EnergyChevron Technology Ventures backs largest US CVP power plant Emerging technologies investor Chevron Technology Ventures is backing what will be the largest US power plant that uses lenses to focus sunlight onto photovoltaic cells. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. CTV will build the 1 megawatt concentrating photovoltaic power array on the tailing site of Chevron Mining Inc.'s molybdenum mine in Questa New Mexico according to a New York Times report. Unlike other solar projects that use mirrors this project will use lenses to direct sunlight onto 175 photovoltaic panels. Germany's Concentrix Solar is providing the concentrating photovoltaic system. Chevron plans to break ground on the 20-acre project this spring and complete construction by the end of the year. The company will simultaneously evaluate various soil cover depths for the closure of the tailing facility at the end of mining operations. Chevron will sell the array's power to the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative which serves about 30 000 members in three northern New Mexico counties. The array will be the largest concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) installation in the United States and one of the largest in the world Chevron Technology Ventures President Des King said. The technology is expected to work best in areas such as New Mexico's desert which have high direct solar radiation. The demonstration will help us understand the benefits of CPV technology and determine its applicability in other Chevron operations and properties " King added. SolFocus works with college to create largest CPV facility in North America Victorville California-based Victor Valley College and CPV producer SolFocus are installing a 1 megawatt facility of high concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems for the college's micro-generating facility. The facility will produce 2.69 million kilowatt hours per year which is roughly 30 percent of the college's electricity demand. Construction on the six acre plant is currently underway on the college's main campus and consists of 122 8.4 kW arrays. When the solar plant is completed in May it will be the largest energy facility of its kind in North America. "After reviewing several options for a solar provider SolFocus demonstrated that it could deliver the best value in solar energy for the college " said Victor Valley College President Dr. Robert Silverman. "This project can be a model for other colleges and universities in meeting energy needs and supporting a green jobs economy." While the education sector in the US is suffering unprecedented losses in funding Victor Valley College said that it is going ahead with the CPV project because it will ultimately reduce energy costs increases revenue streams from outside sources and create training opportunities for well paying jobs in the new energy economy. Funding for the project was provided in part by a capital construction bond Measure JJ approved by voters in November 2008 along with other capital funds. The college will also benefit from around $4m paid over five years through performance based incentives as part of the California Solar Initiative (CSI) programme. SolFocus will be supporting the college in its curriculum development around advanced solar energy technology a critical element in supporting US President Barack Obama's green jobs initiatives. "This project between SolFocus and Victor Valley College is the first of its kind in North America " said Mark Crowley President and CEO of SolFocus. "SolFocus technology can scale up or down very easily to accommodate a wide variety of energy demands from smaller distributed generation projects to utility-scale projects." According to the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education 75 percent of the solar installations at colleges and universities around the country have less than 100 kW of capacity. "This 1 MW installation puts the College and SolFocus in the top echelon of campus installations " added Crowley. "A small proportion of the 4 000 college and university campuses in the US have begun solar projects so the market opportunity for this sector is promising as the CPV industry scales up to utility deployments." SolFocus CPV technology employs a system of patented reflective optics to concentrate sunlight 650 times onto small highly efficient solar cells. The SolFocus SF-1100S system deployed at the college uses approximately 1/1 000th of the active expensive solar cell material compared to traditional photovoltaic panels. In addition the cells utilized in SolFocus CPV systems have over twice the efficiency of traditional silicon photovoltaic cells. SolFocus also offers environmental benefits including next-to-no water usage a small land footprint with dual use potential and no permanent shadowing or wildlife corridor disruption. Additionally SolFocus CPV provides the shortest energy payback and lowest greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity of any solar technology. SolFocus is headquartered in Mountain View California with European operations headquartered in Madrid Spain and manufacturing in Mesa Arizona and manufacturing partners in India and China. OPDE starts up real-time Control Centre in Spain The OPDE group has launched a new Data Control Centre at its headquarters in Fustiñana (Navarra) Spain to monitor and manage in real-time all the inverters and trackers on photovoltaic solar farms promoted by the Group in Spain and Italy. Based at the RÃ�OS Company part of the OPDE group the monitoring will be active in real-time on a 7-day per week basis. For the moment 73 MW is being monitored with more than 7 000 trackers and 21 000 inverters already controlled by the new centre whose start-up ensures an immediate response to any incident that may be registered. The real-time monitoring will enable the centre to record data every five minutes. It will record the Calculation of the Performance Ratio (PR) and Availability as well as the extensive information supplied by the system for reporting quarterly and annual reports on solar farm production. At the same time as an incident occurs and an alarm goes off on the farm the alarm is registered in the Control Centre and on the configured mail accounts as well as being recorded on the database. Instantly the Control Centre reports the incident to the professional in charge of the maintenance on the solar farm in question to minimize the time to solve the incident in question. In addition the system has access to the surveillance cameras at each solar plant -covering both the perimeter of the plant and the inside of it thus enabling all the data and information of what is happening to be seen at all times. The OPDE group through the company RÃ�OS will launch Control Centres similar to the one in Fustiñana in the United States and Italy to monitor the operation of the wind farms promoted in both countries. It is also studying the option of making its Control Centres available to other developers and photovoltaic solar power generation companies. OPDE Group companies in 2008 exceeded €560m of consolidated turnover and currently the solar photovoltaic company is strategically committed to internationalisation. CVP funding opportunities from US Department of Energy The US Department of Energy said it envisions that it will be issuing a funding opportunity for all types of entities with CSP or CPV systems having the capability to execute a multi-MW project according to its Request for Information (RFI)/Solar Demonstration Zone Project/RFI Number: DE-FOA-0000303. This is an excellent funding opportunity and one of the only ones available for CPV given its immaturity as a burgeoning solar technology. With public funding available companies in the sector will have an opportunity to work on bringing material and process costs down. The DOE said that it is important that applicants show “the potential for executing both operationally and financially a large scale power generating project from both an engineering and construction perspective or have relationships with such partners to provide this capability in the future.” All responses to this RFI must be delivered electronically in Microsoft Word (.doc) format as an attachment to an email sent to the following email address: by 11:59 pm Eastern Time on April 2 2010 Emails should have the subject line “Solar Demonstration Zone RFI Response” and responses no longer than 5 pages. It was advised that those applying identify your answers by responding to a specific question if possible.

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