News

20 April 2009

 

GreenVolts’ founder & CEO becomes executive chairman

Concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system maker GreenVolts Inc of San Francisco, CA, USA says that its CEO Bob Cart has moved to a full-time role as executive chairman. He will also serve as chairman of the board of directors.

After being founder & CEO of several other ventures, entrepreneur Cart founded GreenVolts in 2005. GreenVolts has since raised $44m in funding to date.

Cart will now focus on the firm’s strategic vision and direction, including work on government relations and strategic alliances. Gary Beasley (who has been GreenVolts’ chief financial officer for the past year) has assumed the additional responsibilities of president & CEO on an interim basis.

“We are at a natural evolution point in the maturation of this company, and it made sense to allow others to focus on the day-to-day operations of the company so that I could keep my eyes trained on the broader vision and future for GreenVolts,” Cart says.

In 2007, GreenVolts of San Francisco, CA, USA announced a 20-year power purchase agreement to build the 2MW ‘GV1’ plant in Tracy, CA (50 miles east of San Francisco) and sell the electricity to Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), aiming to complete the project by the end of 2009. When GreenVolts raised $30m in a series B round of financing last September, it was still aiming to finish the first half of the project by the end of 2008. However, the deadline for completing the entire project has since been delayed to mid-2010. The firm decided that, instead of using its first-generation technology, it would instead work on improving its CPV system’s design in order to boost its performance and lower its cost, and put in place a next-generation system at GV1.

GreenVolts is making changes to several parts, including the mirrors and receiver (including the lens and solar cell). Until now, GreenVolts has bought solar cells from other firms. In March it entered into a two-year development relationship with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) of Golden, CO, USA, licensing patents to commercialize its inverted metamorphic (IMM) multi-junction solar cells. Last August this technology reached record conversion efficiency of 40.8% at 326x concentration (since exceeded by Fraunhofer ISE’s 41.1%, although NREL reckons that its IMM technology promises further substantial increases).

GreenVolts will remain focused on making significant improvements to its technology and advancing its solar cell initiative with NREL, says Beasley.

See related item:

GreenVolts and NREL to commercialize IMM multi-junction solar cells

Search: GreenVolts NREL CPV IMM solar cell GaAs multi-junction solar cell

Visit: www.greenvolts.com