Concentrator photovoltaics: a mature technology for solar power plants - Photovoltaics World

Several of the first market-ready CPV products have been installed in power plants in 2008 and 2009; the technology is now ready for the next wave, with multi megawatts (MW) to be installed in 2010.

For the world’s future energy supply, the highly efficient conversion of solar energy to electrical energy using photovoltaic (PV) cells is one of the key elements. Researchers in the field of photovoltaics are faced with the problem how to increase the efficiency of this conversion process while reducing the cost significantly. The solution with the highest cost reduction potential is concentrator photovoltaics (CPV), where the cost reduction is incurred by replacing expensive PV cell material with lower cost optical systems covering the receiver aperture. In recent years, however, only expensive multijunction III-V concentrator solar cells with efficiencies >40% under concentration became available. This situation led to an intense development work on CPV system technology with the result that several of the first market-ready CPV products have been installed in power plants in 2008. These plants have been able to verify the maturity of this technology with very satisfying field data over the years [1,2].