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News

29 August 2007

 

Emcore receives record concentrator photovoltaic cell order

After an initial 5MW order earlier this year, Emcore Corp of Alberquerque, NM, USA has been awarded a $24m follow-on production order for 3 million solar cells (generating 105MW in total), the industry’s largest concentrator solar cell order to date.

The cells will be used in the SunCube terrestrial concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) system of Green and Gold Energy (GGE) of Glynde, Australia, which has been designed to produce power at a lower cost than traditional photovoltaic technologies, it is claimed.

GGE’s SunCube 1100x CPV system will concentrate light 1100-fold onto custom-designed and optimized version of Emcore’s GaInP/GaAs/Ge Concentrator Triple-Junction (CTJ) solar cell. All cells will be shipped by the end of 2008.

With support from Australian government, the plan is to deploy solar power farms featuring the SunCube low-cost CPV system. GGE is also entering into distribution agreements with several partners, representing a potential for more than 500MW of annual demand.

“Emcore’s solar cell serves as the key enabling technology in our SunCube CPV system,” says GGE’s CEO Greg Watson. “The patent-pending SunCube, together with its supporting technologies and the Emcore cell, are receiving worldwide recognition as the CPV system capable of delivering truly fossil-fuel-competitive energy,” he claims.

“Emcore’s CPV solar cells are optimized for our customers’ systems to yield state-of-the-art performance with the lowest cost per kW-hr,” says David Danzilio, VP and general manager of Emcore’s Photovoltaics Division. Emcore has demonstrated record conversion efficiency of 39% under these high concentration conditions, and this performance should enable the most cost-effective CPV system on the market, claims Emcore. The 39%-efficient CPV cells are currently in volume production for multiple customers in a variety of cell sizes.

“Emcore is committed to continually investing in our concentrator cell technology and further expansion of our manufacturing capacity to meet the growing requirements,” Danzilio adds. As a part of its planned high-volume product roadmap, Emcore’s continuing investment in technology should enable the introduction of CPV solar cell products with conversion efficiencies of greater than 40% under highly concentrated illumination operating conditions required for next-generation, cost-competitive CPV systems, the firm reckons.

See related items:

Emcore claims record efficiency for volume-production, multi-junction solar cell aimed at terrestrial applications

Spectrolab’s new terrestrial solar cell smashes 40% efficiency barrier

Visit Emcore: http://www.emcore.com

Visit GGE: http://www.greenandgoldenergy.com.au