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| Science & Technology |
| Sungri claims solar energy for 5c/kwh in 15 months |
| 2008-05-05 |
| From a company PR release A new solar energy system will soon make it possible to produce electricity at a wholesale cost of 5-cents per kWh (kilowatt hour)....competitive with the wholesale cost of producing electricity using fossil fuels and a fraction of the current cost of solar energy. XCPV (Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics), a system that concentrates the equivalent of more than 1,600 times the sun's energy onto the world's most efficient solar cells, was announced. "Solar Power at 5 cents per kWh would be a world-changing breakthrough," said Craig Goodman The theory seems reasonable, that is, concentrate the radiation on a small efficient conversion device. This allows for an expensive conversion device to be practical because the concentrators are relatively less expensive. However the concentrators will still need to take up a lot of acreage and we still need much better energy storage. |
| Posted by:mhw |
| #5 If it can't explode, burst into flames, or lacks a radius of destruction, it's not really engineering, now is it? |
| Posted by: SteveS 2008-05-05 16:59 |
| #4 Yawn. Makes very little difference in the real world without a revolution in battery technology. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2008-05-05 15:55 |
| #3 But this is another reminder of the side-benefit of $120/barrel oil. There is just a whole lot of money being thrown at energy tech right now, and it appears likely that this will continue. Breakthroughs are going to be made, and some of them are going to be game changers. |
| Posted by: remoteman 2008-05-05 14:03 |
| #2 They say they have a super-duper technique to cool the surface of the solar cell (probably some kind of air jet) but even so, it would be tough to keep the peak temperatures below 1000 F. Thus it would probably have to have a some protective system to keep people (and critters) away. |
| Posted by: mhw 2008-05-05 12:36 |
| #1 What temps are we talking about here? I suspect there might be fire and human safety considerations for the system. |
| Posted by: tipover 2008-05-05 11:12 |