Intelligence Brief
Intelligence Brief 12 May - 24 May
24 May 2010
Companies and organisations included in this news round-up include: BrightSource, Alstom, California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS), VantagePoint Venture Partners, Morgan Stanley, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, River Mountains Water Treatment Facility, Amonix, NREL, 3M, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and IQE.
BrightSource raises $150m for 14 Plant expansion
BrightSource Energy, Inc., developer of utility-scale solar thermal power plants, has raised an additional $150m in its most recent equity financing.
The Series D round brings BrightSource’s total equity financing to more than $300m.
New investors including Alstom and the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) joined existing investors in this round, led by VantagePoint Venture Partners, Morgan Stanley and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
The additional financing will be used to support BrightSource's 2,610 megawatts in contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and Southern California Edison to build 14 solar power plants in the US southwest by 2016.
The funds will also be used by BrightSource to further its international expansion plans.
“A Series D capital raise of this magnitude reflects the market’s confidence in our world-class team and the important role of our Luz Power Tower technology in meeting the growing global demand for cost-effective and reliable solar power,” said John Woolard, Chief Executive Officer of BrightSource.
“By adding new strategic investors to our current blue chip investor base, we strengthen our ability to make solar thermal energy a significant part of the world’s energy mix.”
As part of the financing, Alstom has committed to invest up to $55 million, marking Alstom’s entry into the solar market.
Philippe Joubert, Alstom Power President, said: “Following this investment, both companies intend to enter into an industrial relationship, which will enhance BrightSource’s leading position in this industry.”
In February 2010, BrightSource received a conditional commitment from the US Department of Energy for $1.37bn in loan guarantees to support the financing of BrightSource’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System project– the first of its US-based power projects.
Once constructed, Ivanpah is expected to be the world’s largest solar energy project, nearly doubling the amount of solar thermal electricity produced in the US today.
The project will also create more than 1,000 local jobs at the peak of construction and generate $250m in construction wages.
The power plant will be constructed by Bechtel, which is the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for the Ivanpah project.
BrightSource expects to commence construction later this year.
Southern Nevada Water goes CPV route
Southern Nevada Water Authority's River Mountains Water Treatment Facility in Henderson, Nevada is using CPV technology to power itself, according to a sunpluggers.com report.
While the 308-kilowatt solar installation was actually completed and began operating in July 2009, the formal dedication presented by United States Senator, Harry Reid, took place in recent weeks.
Reid symbolically turned on a handful of towering CPV systems at the dedication ceremony.
The installation's developer, Amonix, based in the Los Angeles area, calls its equipment MegaModules. The six systems at the water treatment plant are each about 50 feet high and 77 feet wide.
They are mounted on trackers that follow the changing position of the sun in the sky throughout the day.
Amonix describes its equipment as being environmentally friendly because the land beneath the systems does not have to be graded and cleared to the extent it does for other ground-mounted solar technologies.
The company plans to employ about 300 people at a manufacturing plant it intends to develop soon in Southern Nevada.
The company has been awarded $9.5m from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit and plans to use $5.9m of the funding to establish a new manufacturing facility.
The company plans to open a plant by the end of 2010.
NREL and 3M join research efforts
NREL and 3M are combining efforts to focus research in thin-film photovoltaics, concentrating solar power, and biofuels, according to a CompoundSemi News report.
3M and NREL will work to develop and test new moisture barrier films and flexible packaging for thin film solar cells made of semiconducting layers of copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS).
NREL researchers previously reported that CIGS cells have achieved a record efficiency of 19.9 percent.
However, commercial viability for the cells requires high efficiency, low cost, and extreme durability.
The solar cells are expected to work effectively for 20 years.
The plan is for NREL Principal Investigator Mike Kempe to test 3M technologies designed to protect solar cells from moisture and other contaminants during their 20-year lifetimes.
Kempe and other NREL researchers will conduct accelerated stress tests, including temperature, humidity and irradiance tests, to establish failure barriers on as many as three types of 3M CIGS designs.
NREL and 3M will jointly interpret the results to help establish module standards for a 20-year lifetime, said the report.
The company will also be working with the NREL to improve effectiveness and robustness of mirror films for concentrated solar power and concentrated photovoltaics.
German CPV design uses almost all of Spectrum of Available Energy - 41.1 % Efficiency
Germany´s Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft has awarded solar researchers Dr. Andreas Bett and Dr. Frank Dimroth the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize 2010 for the development of highly efficient multi-junction solar cells and concentrator modules.
Dr. Andreas Bett and Dr. Frank Dimroth of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE in Freiburg received huge recognition last year for their development of a metamorphic triple-junction solar cell which achieved a record efficiency of 41.1%.
“We substitute costly semiconductor material with inexpensive optics,” explains Dr. Andreas Bett, Head of the Department of Materials – Solar Cells and Technologies.
“In addition, we use extremely efficient solar cells and thus reduce the solar electricity costs.”
This technology produces more power per area than conventional flat plate PV and was originally developed for space applications.
Only by combining these cells with Fresnel lenses, a cost-effective alternative was found for manufacturing that also could be used on earth.
In the record solar cell from Fraunhofer ISE with an efficiency of 41.1 percent, three subcells made out of gallium indium phosphide, gallium indium arsenide and germanium are stacked on top of one another.
Each of the III-V compound semiconductors utilizes a different wavelength range in the solar spectrum, according to the researchers.
By looking at the ultra thin solar cell of only a few µm, one cannot perceive the complexity of the inner structure.
Special Fresnel lenses concentrate the incident sunlight by a factor of 500 and focus it onto the tiny 3 mm² cells.
To avoid overheating, each cell is mounted on a copper plate which dissipates the heat well enough to make a passive cooling of the cells sufficient.
Prof. Eicke R. Weber, Director of Fraunhofer ISE is convinced: “We expect that high efficiency concentrator technology – in addition to photovoltaics using crystalline silicon and the classic thin-film technology – will become established as a third technology for cost-efficient generation of solar electricity in the sunny regions of the world.”
IQE develops triple junction CPV solar cells for multi-substrates
IQE, a global supplier of advanced semiconductor epitaxial wafer products and wafer services to the semiconductor industry, has developed epitaxial processes for producing high-efficiency, triple-junction concentrator PV solar cells with comparable results on both 6-inch (150mm) diameter germanium (Ge) and gallium arsenide (GaAs) substrates.
The group, according to a PV-Tech report, has been working with a number of key partners over the past two years to develop advanced, multijunction solar technologies for the provision of large-scale renewable energy.
According to the report, Drew Nelson, IQE's CEO and president, said: "Delivering 6-inch diameter wafers for CPV applications is an important milestone for IQE, and our experience as the world-leading outsource manufacturer of GaAs-based wafers has enabled us to develop the capability to produce multijunction solar cells on both GaAs and Ge substrates with comparable results, fully scalable from our well-established 4-inch process in terms of performance, uniformity, and yield."
"Our 6-inch CPV wafer products have generated a great deal of interest at both the cell supplier and systems-supplier level, and have demonstrated excellent performance and uniformities on which we will continue to build," concluded Nelson.
