SUNRGI is a company which designs and develops solar energy systems, and they presented their latest project at National Energy Marketers Association’s 11th Annual Global Energy Forum in Washington, DC. They created a technology what could produce electricity from solar power as cheap as coal.
The technology is based on XCPV (Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics) which amplifies by 1,600 the energy coming from the Sun. This energy is concentrated on very efficient solar cells which will produce the electricity at a cost of 5 cents per kWh.
Craig Goodman, president of the National Energy Marketers Association, was very excited by this technology and he stated that “Solar Power at 5 cents per kWh would be a world-changing breakthrough. It would make solar generation of electricity as affordable as generation from coal, natural gas or other non-renewable sources, without requiring a subsidy”.
The XCPV technology could “enter on the market” very soon, a fact confirmed by Robert S. Block, co-founder and SUNRGI principal, who said that “in a little more than a year we were able to develop and successfully test XCPV. We expect the SUNRGI system to become available for both on- and off-grid power applications, worldwide, in twelve to fifteen months”.
SUNRGI’s solar energy system is very different than any other ever developed by researchers because it uses a low profile technology for concentrating sunlight and it also has other advantages like a proprietary technology and methodology for cooling solar cells, a low cost, modular system optimized for mass-production, low-cost field installation and a custom-designed system for easy operation and maintenance.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I sure hope it comes to fruition! One can only hope the technology isn’t bought up and suppressed and/or the inventors don’t have a fatal “accident”.
May 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Hello !!
This is very useful and informative and eco friendly as well.
thanks.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
The perspective is exciting, but the phrase “amplifies by 1,600 the energy coming from the Sun” doesn’t make any sense to me.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
How many times do we have to hear about a new low cost solar technology that “could” beat existing energy technologies? There aren’t any real numbers here besides 5 cents per kWh. And it doesn’t say how they derived that number…is the setup and operating cost split over 5 years? 20 years? 100 years?
I’m calling BS on this until I see it working and people are buying these systems in droves.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Looks like some convex lenses are used from image I see, hope these solar gadgets become more affordable and efficient to be used in every home.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
We need more innovation in alternative energy. Great site. Keep it up. Spread the solar word!
May 8th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Lets hope the state of California is watching..
May 8th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Sounds too good to be true. I wonder when the oil companies will buy it out and stuff it in a deep dark corner for ever and ever.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
as long as there’s nothing to show (and there apparently really isn’t, as the description of the technology seems very generic), this looks more like a stock boosting gag than a serious effort.
May 8th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Once we are tucked comfortably away in the ‘burbs in our geothermal/solar, heated, solar powered, reasonably sized practical survival units and running around in our solar rechargeable electric cars, the oil barons will have to learn to eat oil, because we won’t trade food for it any more!
May 8th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I have my doubts that it will work as advertised, but here are the basic principles.
It is a solar concentrator. The convex lenses on the front focus the sunlight onto tiny active areas in the back. That means they don’t need much relatively expensive semiconductor material per for a relatively large collection area. Sungri is using Spectrolab’s triple junction cells, which are supposed to be 37% efficient. They’re expensive, but if you’re only using a small amount of them it just might pay off.
One of the key problems with concentrators is heat. All that energy falls on the cell, not all of it gets turned into electricity, the rest is waste heat. Photovoltaics get less efficient as they get hot, so cooling a concentrator array is a significant trick. It looks like there are some serious fins on the back of this thing, so maybe they’re on to something.
May 9th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Imagine ever school and every state owned buildings roof tops covered with solar panels.The school district’s and the state would receive their power for free in exchange for the lease of their roof space to the power company’s.If you live in Calif. look around at all the unused roof tops and the underutilzed solar collecters.It baffles me to no end why this technology is not being mandated for use everywhere.
May 17th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Sounds way too good to be true. Also way too easy. Developed in a year?
May 19th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
this is exactly what we need to get back to
for too long we have just accepted that there is nothing that we can do
let’s just hope they don’t get greedy
or copyright the concept