News

21 October 2008

 

GreenVolts wins $250,000 grant for low-cost CPV installation

Concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system maker GreenVolts Inc of San Francisco, CA, USA has been awarded a $250,000 grant from the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program for its proposal ‘Low Cost Installation of Concentrating Photovoltaic’ (rating highest among all applicants to the the PIER Renewables Solar PV RD&D Grant Solicitation).

The PIER program supports energy research, development and demonstration (RD&D) projects that aim to bring environmentally safe, affordable and reliable energy services and products to the Californian marketplace.

Founded in 2005, GreenVolts’ CPV technology integrates optics (an off-axis micro-dish aluminum reflector mirror) as well as solar tracking into a system that aims to produce the lowest-cost utility-scale solar energy for wholesale distributed generation.

GreenVolts was previously awarded a PIER grant for R&D on its 3kW two-axis CarouSol tracker, which tracks the sun as it moves across the sky and concentrates 625 times the sun’s energy onto its CPV system’s GaAs-based triple-junction solar cells. The firm completed its work as part of that grant in advance of its second proposal. “This PIER grant is continued validation of our technology and our approach to the marketplace,” says founder & CEO Bob Cart.

GreenVolts is currently involved in construction of the 2MW GV1 project in Byron, CA (claimed to be the world's largest non-silicon CPV plant), which broke ground this summer and should be completed in 2009 as part of a 20-year power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E). The first megawatt of GV1 will be delivered later this year.

“GreenVolts is demonstrating that smart, reliable solar projects can help the state reach its goals of generating 33% of our electricity from renewable sources and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 2020,” says California Energy Commission chairman Jackalyne Pfannenstiel.

See related item:

GreenVolts secures $30m Series B funding

Search: GreenVolts CPV GaAs triple-junction solar cells

Visit: www.energy.ca.gov/pier

Visit: www.greenvolts.com