17 November 2011

Reflexite Soitec Optical Technology JV formed to make SOG Fresnel lens plates at planned San Diego CPV system manufacturing facility

Soitec of Bernin, France, which makes engineered substrates including silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers (as well as III-V epiwafers through its Picogiga International division), and Reflexite Energy Solutions Inc of Avon, CT, USA, a global supplier of microstructured optical components for the solar power, lighting, instrumentation and display industries, have formed the joint venture Reflexite Soitec Optical Technology LLC.

The new company will produce the silicone-on-glass (SOG) Fresnel lens plates used in Soitec’s concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules and co-develop next-generation technologies that will continue to increase the efficiencies and lower the costs of SOG lens plates. The JV will be located within the new CPV manufacturing facility that Soitec is planning to open in San Diego, CA.

Reflexite is supplying the technology and manufacturing expertise to produce injection-molded SOG lens plates at the ‘fab within a fab’ to be built inside Soitec’s San Diego facility. Soitec is providing lens design expertise to achieve maximum performance across a wide range of operating conditions in CPV modules, business opportunities in the Southwest US, and the technical infrastructure of the factory. Soitec and Reflexite are currently collaborating on the design of the area of the factory to be dedicated to the JV, which will employ about 100 people.

“This joint venture is unique in the CPV industry and represents a very important step in our commitment to the San Diego region and the US market,” says Soitec’s president, CEO & chairman André Jacques Auberton-Hervé. “It is both a technological collaboration and an innovative economic solution in the highly competitive renewable-energy market. By working together under the same roof, we can ensure the continuous supply of superior-quality lens plates at the most competitive cost, and our future product development programs will be much more efficient by working in such close proximity,” he adds.

“We have partnered with Soitec for many years to develop a durable, field-tested system that has been deployed successfully around the world, and we will bring all this experience to bear as we build up our common California base of operations together,” says Reflexite’s CEO Michael Foley. “By co-locating our optics facility with their CPV module assembly facility we will have the best possible logistics and even closer collaboration in the future,” he adds.

The lens plate is a key element in CPV systems, incorporating a Soitec-designed Fresnel lens that concentrates sunlight more than 500 times to achieve CPV technology’s high solar energy conversion efficiency. Soitec claims to be the first CPV firm to use SOG to produce its lens plate design, which combines the durability of a glass surface with high-volume precision micro-replication (the key to low-cost production).

Reflexite’s SOG lens plates are claimed to suffer no mechanical or chemical degradation such as yellowing, cracking and delamination. The firm has been a long-time supplier to Soitec, and its optics are key elements in CPV systems that have already won Soitec more than 300MW in solar power plant projects throughout the Southwest USA.

Tags: Soitec CPV modules

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