In 2008 it looked like the CPV market was about to head into overdrive. Although projects in this industry, which uses mirrors and lenses to focus light onto triple-junction III-V cells, were typically for deployments of just a few hundred kilowatts, plans were in place to build far, far bigger plants. This included a staggering 154 MW installation in Mildura, Australia.
But a few months later many of these plans were in tatters, including the flagship project in Mildura. By then the credit crunch was wreaking havoc and many chastened investors were unwilling to take the risk of putting their cash behind a relatively new technology. The fledgling CPV industry was left treading water.Since then the installed capacity of CPV across the globe has grown modestly – according to the CPV consortium, which represents more than 90 percent of the industry, in 2010 about 8 MW of CPV was installed and generating electricity. This year should be a fair bit better, and even more encouragingly, there is good reason to believe that the rocketing growth predicted at the back end of the last decade can now take place over the next few years.
Evidence for this surge in CPV deployment can be found in the press releases of the leading system manufacturers. "The amount of announcements has been huge, and the traction for CPV is not like it's ever been before," says Nancy Hartsoch, Chairman of the CPV Consortium and VP of Marketing at the Californian-based CPV system maker SolFocus. "Before it was push, push, push – now there is pull."
The rafter of recent announcements for CPV deployment includes a 30 MW contract for SolFocus to install 30 MW in San Diego County. Work will start in the last quarter of this year and will be completed by the end of 2012. "What we are excited about [with this project] is that this is being funded by an independent. It's not someone investing in us – it's someone investing in the project," enthuses Hartsoch. "It truly says that CPV at scale is financeable by conventional financing. That's a big step for CPV."
The European CPV system manufacturer Soitec has an even bigger project in the pipeline. It has signed powerpurchase agreements to supply a total of 305 MW to the San Diego Electricity and Gas company. To deliver, Soitec will build a factory in the US, before installing the CPV Systems between 2013 and 2015. The finance for this venture is in place, because the company recently raised €150 million for its CPV and LED business.
The tremendous growth that is expected within the CPVindustry comes at a time of weak, precarious financialrecovery in the US and Europe. So the success in winning these power-purchase agreements has not been easy, and is a triumph for CPV system manufacturers, who are now able to make a far stronger case for deployment of this technology than ever before.
One of the biggest reasons why the CPV industry is in far better shape than it was two or three year's ago is that it now can now provide evidence that this technology can succeed. "If you can show an investor, a bank and an independent engineer that you are able to a do a megawatt with a customer, a power-purchase agreement and real market pressure – and set up the plant in time, in-cost, and the plant performs in-spec – that makes the change," explains Concentrix founder Hansjörg Lerchenmüller, who is now the Senior VP of the Customer Group of the Solar Energy Business Unit at Soitec.
Hartsoch agrees with Lerchenmüller, pointing out that some of the leading CPV system makers now have installations that have been running for up to three years: "Our oldest site is a test site that was put in the ground in late 2007." At this location the company's first-generation product, plus subsequent generations, has been put 'on sun' and data gathered for four years. In addition to testing under normal operating conditions, engineers subject the cells to very high temperatures to confirm that they can withstand the most extreme conditions and still remain within the operating temperature range of the cells.
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