Intelligence Brief
Concentrix Solar contributes with its FLATCON® technology to the construction of the ecological “MASDAR City” in Abu Dhabi
23 October 2009
Concentrix Solar has been awarded a contract to participate with its FLATCON systems in a concentrator photovoltaic project in the framework of the MASDAR initiative in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The concentrator photovoltaic power plant will be built in MASDAR City. MASDAR is a planned ecological city which broke ground in February 2008. The city is built about 30 kilometers east of the capital of Abu Dhabi, bordering to the west with the Abu Dhabi International Airport. The CO2-free model city is intended to be powered by renewable energies only. The seat of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) will be located there in the future.
Concentrix Solar participated in the international tender together with the Spanish Instituto de Sistemas Fotovoltaicos de Concentracion (ISFOC). ISFOC will coordinate the construction of a one-megawatt power plant in Abu Dhabi. The institute was already responsible for the building of the first large concentrator photovoltaic power plant in Europe, where a total of three megawatt nominal power were set up in various locations in the province of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, of which Concentrix Solar installed 500 kilowatts.
The main goal of the project in Abu Dhabi will be to proceed with the work which was started at ISFOC with concentrator photovoltaic technology and to gain more data regarding the application of this technology in hot desert regions. Concentrator Photovoltaic (CPV) is perfectly suitable for the use in very hot and sunny regions, as it only shows a fraction of the loss of efficiency that conventional photovoltaic systems suffer when exposed to hot outdoor temperatures. Furthermore, CPV systems are ideally suited for the application in locations like Abu Dhabi because they are designed for desert-like environmental conditions: they require little space, they have a high electricity yield and small water demand. This makes it possible to produce power sustainably and reliably in very hot, arid and highly populated locations exactly when the power demand is highest.
The installation in Abu Dhabi with a nominal power of 100 kilowatts is of particular importance to Concentrix Solar for the further development of the local markets in the Middle East.
About Concentrix Solar
Concentrix Solar GmbH was founded in February 2005 as a spin-off company of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. At present, about 60 people are employed at Concentrix Solar.
Concentrix Solar manufactures concentrator power plants for sunny locations. By means of Fresnel lenses, sunlight is focused onto small highly-efficient solar cells. These solar cells convert the sunlight, concentrated almost 500 times, directly into electrical energy. With this technology, Concentrix Solar achieves AC system efficiencies of 25 percent, which are almost twice as high as those achieved by conventional silicon technology. As a result, cost reduction potentials between 10 and 20 percent can be reached, depending on the location of the installation.
For manufacturing the concentrator modules, Concentrix Solar operates a fully-automated industrial production line with an annual production capacity of 25 megawatts located in Freiburg, Germany.
