The extension of tax credits for renewable-based power generation along with government stimulus and regulatory requirements to meet renewable portfolio standards are helping to drive continued investment on the part of VCs and utilities into the cleantech sector.
In fact, green-technology firms garnered the largest share of venture capital in the third quarter, with global investments rising to $1.59 billion.
For an emerging industry like CPV, this long term certainty is critical for investors to recognise that there will be a growing market for the technology, along with all renewable technologies in the future.
From a venture capital firm’s perspective, San Francisco-based Nth Power foresees a continuity in the rapid rate of growth in the global solar market as installed costs continue to come down and solar becomes more and more competitive with other sources of power generation.
“CPV has to compete with wholesale market prices and that is more challenging,” says Nth Power’s Tim Woodward.
“There will not be a single technology that would win the solar market and CPV will play a growing role in distributed utility applications –installations that are less than 20 MW and built within the existing transmission and distribution networks,” said Woodward, who is scheduled to speak at CPV Today’s 2nd CPV Summit US, to be held in San Diego (February 2-3 2010).
He added that CPV is a bet on continuing to increase the cell efficiency of 3J cells, and reducing the cost and improving the reliability of optics and tracking systems.
Drivers
Solar is a proven industry, even though it has not yet reached grid parity and it has still a huge potential for growth.
Woodward believes that CPV will certainly benefit from positive market drivers such as extension of tax credits and stimulus packages,
“In particular what we see is an increasing involvement of utilities in the solar markets as developers and owners of assets. The key is that CPV must keep up with the pace of cost reduction that is happening across the other solar technologies in order to maintain a competitive position in the market,” said Woodward.
Cost reduction
It is believed that the main obstacle in reaching grid parity lies within the boundaries of cost: the initial investment and the operation and maintenance cost. The reduction of these two factors is a key element that must be taken into account towards a reduction of the total cost of the system. The two most important costs are those originated in the tracking system and the solar cells. Great efforts should be made over reducing the costs of these two key components in order to reduce the overall cost of CPV systems.
The installed cost, according to Woodward, can be assessed relatively easily. So the big unknown is the O&M expense to maintain an adequate capacity factor.
The upside for CPV is that there is likely to be increasing system efficiencies through improvements in cell efficiency and the ability to increase concentration such that the system kWh will improve per unit of cost.
Woodward is scheduled to speak during the ` Strategies to Secure Private Investment for CPV in a Risk Adverse Climate’ session along with host of other speakers at the 2nd CPV Summit US. Other speakers include:
• Terry Jester, Entrepreneur in Residence, Hudson Clean Energy Partners
• Courtney McColgan, Associate, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
• Winston Fu, General Partner, US Venture Partners
• Geoff Hoffheniz, Solar Team Leader / Senior Renewable Energy Consultant, SgurrEnergy Ltd
For more info, click here:
http://www.cpvtoday.com/usa
or contact:
Heidi Hafes
Events Director
New Solar Today
T:(+ 44) 0207 375 7206
E: heidi@newsolartoday.com
