A clearer road ahead

ANALYSIS I CPV
CPV technology; the majority of suppliers are based here and
are already competing successfully against manufacturers of
other photovoltaic technologies.
Crucially, these regions receive a lot of solar radiation. “In southwest
US where the direct normal irradiance is higher, CPV
becomes a viable option when you consider the levelised cost of
electricity,” says Davies.
And it’s not just this region of the world. Davies expects strong
growth to come from Mexico as US-based CPV system
developer, SolFocus, readies to provide thousands of systems to
a 450 MW project planned in Baja California. Meanwhile, Soitec
and Schneider Electric are busy installing pilot projects in
Morocco, totalling 10 MW, as the Moroccan Agency for Solar
Energy lays out plans for 2 GW of solar power by 2020. And
more than 100 MW of solar power is planned in the north of
Chile to power remote mines. Davies reckons CPV will be
favoured here as the technology will tolerate the region’s
dramatic temperature fluctuations more than convetional PV.
“Saudi Arabia has a 16 GW target, with projects at least 1 MW in
size,” she adds. “This is ideal for CPV, as the technology
benefits from being deployed on a large scale, and the
companies with the lowest levelised cost of electricity will win.”
Clearly myriad projects are taking off, but can we ignore the fact
that key industry players, Amonix and GreenVolts, are
grounded? Davies highlights Amonix may have closed operations,
but it hasn’t disappeared completely. “The company was always
planning to come back online with a new generation of systems
and there have been no announcements to contradict this,” she
says. Meanwhile, she believes ABB withdrew GreenVolts’ funds
following uncertainty in the overall PV market, not a reluctance to
invest specifically in CPV.
“Put this technology in one of its target markets and it will
generate a much higher amount of electricity over its lifetime
than rival [photovoltaic] technologies,” she says. “This means
the kilowatt hour cost comes down and the technology will
become much more competitive over the next five years.”
And as Davies is keen to point out, industry is beginning to
realise this. US and central America are the largest markets for
“Its perception is one of the major barriers for CPV suppliers,
and these announcements overshadow success stories from
suppliers such as Soitec, SolFocus and SunPower,” she says.
“Investors see this technology as an underdeveloped hot-bed of
technology. These misplaced perceptions have a negative
impact on the bankability of CPV suppliers.”
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Meanwhile, Soitec and Schneider Electric are busy installing pilot projects in
Morocco, totalling 10 MW, as the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy lays out
plans for 2 GW of solar power by 2020. And more than 100 MW of solar power
is planned in the north of Chile to power remote mines. Davies reckons
CPV will be favoured here as the technology will tolerate the region’s
dramatic temperature fluctuations more than convetional PV
Issue IX 2012 I www.solar-international.net 19