Stat of the Day: CPV Solar at Record 33 Percent Efficiency in Field

Concentrated photovoltaic technology performs. Now CPV has to dial in pricing and LCOE and prove long-term reliability.

Eric Wesoff August 21, 2012

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

There are a number of solar performance records of note in this publication from spring of this year (Solar cell efficiency tables version 40, Martin Green, et al.).

But we'll highlight just one.

That's an Amonix module setting a CPV system record at 33 percent efficiency.

Geoffrey S. Kinsey, PhD, Director, PV Technologies at the Fraunhofer Center (and a former Amonix staffer) notes, in an email, that it is the first rating over 33 percent confirmed by a designated test center. He also notes that at 20°C ambient temperature, "the cells are running about 50°C hotter than in modules measured under standard test conditions (STC, 25°C cell temperature)."

Soitec CPV claims a 27 percent system efficiency and a 37 percent 2015 target for commercial product, Amonix specs a 29 percent efficiency in production using a 40 percent cell, and SolFocus also specs a 29 percent figure.

Amonix just closed its Las Vegas factory. SolFocus is raising a $35 million Round E and betting on some large projects south of the border to keep it growing, and Soitec recently won $25 million from the DOE's SUNPATH program to help to support its new North American solar manufacturing facility in San Diego, California.

Vahan Garboushian, the CTO and Founder of Amonix, tells Greentech Media in an email that "[...]plenty of headroom remains for Amonix to confidently achieve a 40 percent module efficiency in the foreseeable future.”

CPV has seen a steady rise in cell and system efficiency. Now the industry just has to get to commercial and utility-scale while besting the price per watt and LCOE of crystalline silicon or c-Si on trackers.