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Progress on Photovottaics - Closer than Generally Thought
The good thing here is that some real for-profit companies are part of the picture. However, everyone in this industry has been issuing overly optimistic predictions for about 30 years so stay tuned. Cost Competitive Electricity from Photovoltaic {PV}Concentrators Called 'Imminent' [this is a govt website and they use scare quotes???] Golden, Colo. â Solar concentrators using highly efficient photovoltaic solar cells will reduce the cost of electricity from sunlight to competitive levels soon..."Concentrating solar electric power is on the cusp of delivering on its promise of low-cost, reliable, solar-generated electricity at a cost that is competitive with mainstream electric generation systems," said Vahan Garboushian, president of Amonix, Inc. of Torrance, Calif. "With the advent of multijunction solar cells, PV concentrator power generation at $3 per watt is imminent in the coming few years," he added.... NREL announced a new record efficiency of 37.9 percent at 10 suns, a measure of concentrated sunlight. Soon thereafter Boeing-Spectrolab, under contract to NREL and the Department of Energy, surpassed the NREL record with 39.0 percent at 236 suns announced at the European photovoltaic conference in Barcelona, Spain... Posted by: mhw 2005-07-24 |
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