Intelligence Brief
Interview with Sunrgi's founding partner Dr. KRS Murthy
5 November 2008
"To achieve affordable solar power much higher concentration similar to Sunrgi is needed"
CPVToday.com Special
It was in April this year when Sunrgi had declared that a new solar energy system will soon make it possible to produce electricity at a wholesale cost of 5-cents per kWh (kilowatt hour).
This price was said to be competitive with the wholesale cost of producing electricity using fossil fuels and a fraction of the current cost of solar energy.
According to Sunrgi's founding partner Dr. KRS Murthy, the wholesale price of 5-cents per kWh is based on the uninstalled wholesale cost ($2.39 peak Watt) for Sunrgi's concentrator/tracker unit.
Dr. Murthy, who is scheduled to speak during CPV Summit USA 2009 (scheduled to take place on February 3-4 in San Diego), says the following issues have created a pessimistic expectation of feasibility and economy of CPV technology:
· Other companies with CPV technology have not been able to concentrate more than 500 suns in limited test conditions and have practically limited to only few sun concentrations;
· The cost of CPV from other vendors has been very high mainly because of high system and installation costs;
· Other companies have limited their sun concentration as they faced cooling problems;
· Other companies have limited their sun concentration as they faced tracking problems;
· Lack of knowledge of the customers about the CPV technology.
"Sunrgi has solved all these problems and taken the lead in technology and product development. Our products have the best metrics in all aspects of the solar PV industry," Dr. Murthy told CPVToday.com.
According to Sunrgi, its technology enables the production of electricity at a wholesale cost of 5-cents per kWh because of its extreme photovoltaics concentration (XCPV); proprietary heat removal system; design for low cost mass production and field installation.
On how much this technology actually costs and how realistic are PPA promises, Dr. Murthy said the total installed cost of Sunrgi systems for large solar farms, commercial and industrial roof top is $3.5M per megawatt peak (about 7.4 cents/kWh when amortized over 20 years, not including site and finance costs. This economy requires large installations of tens of megawatts to hundreds of megawatts.
Challenges for CPV industry
Recently, in an interview with CPVToday.com, Nancy Hartsoch, director of CPV Consortium and VP of corporate marketing for SolFocus, acknowledged that it will be a huge challenge for the industry going forward as it includes a monumental increase in field deployment capability, manufacturing capability, supply chain, etc. At the same time, extensive reliability and some R&D work will continue.
She added that there is plenty of marketshare to support a large supplier base in the CPV area.
Assessing the situation, Dr. Murthy said in the past CST and CPV companies have used huge infrastructures with very high capital expenditure of systems and installation costs.
"In fact, many companies still continue that path. In addition, the cost increased with increase in sun concentrations. With sun concentrations above 5 suns, companies faced cooling problems, with the cooling problem unmanageable over 500 suns for CPV. Operations and maintenance costs were proportionately very high increasing to the total life cycle costs," he said.
Sunrgi breakthrough
According to Dr. Murthy, his company's technology solves all these problems.
The highlights are as follows:
Sunrgi's XCPV system concentrates 2000 suns on to a triple junction solar cell with efficiency of about 38 percent. Sunrgi technology produces 5000 times (2000 sun concentration multiplied by 2.5 times the efficiency of a flat panel silicon based solar cells) the power output per unit area of a solar cell compared to a silicon based flat panel system which have efficiency of about 15 percent. Compared to thin film based solar systems which have efficiencies in the range of 8 percent to 10 percent, Sunrgi technology produces 2000 multiplied by 3.5 = 7000 times the power output per unit area of a solar cell.
In addition, Sunrgi systems are built to do two-axis tracking to ensure that the solar systems aim at the sun from sunrise to sunset and throughout the year during all months and seasons of the year. Most other solar companies either do only one-axis tracking or no tracking at all.
The target market for Sunrgi solar systems are two fold: large solar farms and industrial and commercial roof top. The customers for large solar farms which produce from few megawatts to few hundred mega watts peak are utility companies and independent energy producers for sale of electric power to residential and business complexes or to utility companies. Example roof top customers include retail giants like Wal-Mart and Sears and big automotive parts manufacturers like Magna.
Sunrgi systems have been designed for large scale manufacturer by major subcontract manufacturers with little or no new modification to their current manufacturing infrastructure. The systems are built to be modular with each system producing 1kW peak and occupying less than 3.5 square meters area. One megawatt peak solar farm requires about 1.5 acres, which is only 1/3rd of a flat panel system and 1/4th of a thin film solar system. Sunrgi systems are built for easy and quick installation, much faster than competitors.
Sunrgi systems are designed and installed for ease of operation and maintenance. The systems have very low profile of less than two feet compared to other company systems which have many feet mounted on huge infrastructures.
Companies depending on silicon-based solar cells suffer from the shortage of silicon in the industry, where as Sunrgi which uses Germanium wafer based solar cells are immune from this shortage.
"There are few CPV companies with products featuring about 500 sun concentrations. To achieve affordable solar power much higher concentration similar to Sunrgi is needed," said Dr. Murthy.
Consolidation – couple of years away
"Consolidation is part of any industry especially after the initial growth of the industry. Solar PV industry has three major technologies to include the CPV, flat panel and thin film. Solar PV industry has matured over the decades, even though less than one percent of the electricity is produced by solar PV technology worldwide. Consolidation is expected to happen after 2010. However, with the recent economic meltdown unusual consolidation activity may happen not only in solar PV industry but in many other industries and markets," said Dr. Murthy.
CPV Summit 2009, San Diego
CPV Summit 2009 is scheduled to take place in San Diego (February 3-4, 2009). For more information, click here:
http://www.cpvtoday.com/usa/programme.shtml
or Contact: Joshua Bull by email josh@cpvtoday.com
