Executive Viewpoint
Concentrix Solar CEO says "we must grow even faster over next two years"
7 May 2010
Concentrix Solar's CEO, Hansjörg Lerchenmüller, speaks to CPV Today on target markets, market drivers to building scale, lessons learned through a company integration process, and what his team hopes to achieve in the years ahead.
Q: Which geographic markets are proving the most progressive in integrating your specific technology?
A: There are various markets which are interested in promoting CPV technologies.
Italy is paving the way for a special CPV feed-in tariff and countries like Israel, South Africa and Portugal are in the process of establishing a feed-in tariff.
In the US, renewables get a lot of support regardless of technology and the conditions in the Southwest are ideal for CPV.
In general, one can say that countries with a high DNI with high energy prices, limited area, arid climate, high energy consumption, low security of energy supply are focused on CPV technology.
CPV offers the best solution to all of these problems.
Another argument why governments foster the use of CPV is that it is the most environmentally friendly technology, which helps them fulfill international climate protection agreements.
Q: What are some of the market drivers enabling large scale solar projects to become realities?
A: One of the important pre-conditions for the realization of utility scale CPV projects was the proof of concept.
The industrial breakthrough of some CPV companies by ramping-up or increasing their production capacities, and the successful deployments of demo projects and smaller power plants in the last two years have proven that CPV is a mature technology.
This in turn has led more and more countries to establish support mechanisms to accelerate its development.
This creates favorable general conditions that provide the impetus for large scale CPV projects.
Furthermore, the top CPV companies are beginning to demonstrate their ability to obtain financing for expansions and projects.
This is very positive as it is a requirement for the realization of large scale projects.
In the US another factor which is starting to crystallize is the benefit of CPV in terms of environmental issues.
Not only does CPV not require water as do CSP power plants, but they also do not fully cover the land as do PV systems.
This environmental friendliness is further highlighted by CPV’s very short energy payback time and its high degree of recyclability.
Other countries are also starting to recognize this benefit.
Q: It's been just over two years since Concentrix Solar constructed the 100 kW unit for the concentrator PV large power plant in Puertollano, Spain and the subsequent creation of Concentrix Iberia. What type of feedback has been received from utility companies about the project?
A: In sum, Concentrix Solar installed 500 kW in the ISFOC project.
Our systems are performing very well; we reach 25 percent AC system efficiencies under full operating conditions in the field.
Our modules are IEC certified which confirms their performance and reliability.
This, plus the benefits we have demonstrated that we can provide to the utilities have created a large amount of interest.
The utilities cherish the continuous power output and our systems ability to match peak load demand. ´
The feedback we have had from utilities has been very positive so far, and we are confident that this will lead to cooperation on many projects in the near future.
Q: What have been some of the challenges now that you are part of a larger organization? And the advantages?
A: The biggest challenge was to integrate very fast into the well-functioning Soitec organization as a new business unit of the Soitec Group.
Right from the beginning, Soitec offered strong support and resources and we established interfaces where needed. Concentrix Solar benefits from Soitec’s strong manufacturing and procurement organization as well as from its strong financial position.
The close collaboration enables us to advance our products for the benefit of our clients. Today, Soitec is the uncontested market leader in high-volume manufacturing of SOI wafers with a strong manufacturing background.
They know how to grow, get big and be successful.
Soitec was also a spin-off of a research institute, so we have a lot in common - a similar corporate culture.
This made integration easy.
They have gone through the process of fast growth before, so they know what is needed to be successful, which will definitely help us.
Because Soitec is big, their network helps us to open new opportunities.
Q: What does Concentrix Solar hope to accomplish over the next two years?
A: Although we made big progress in the last two years by ramping-up our fully automated production line, becoming bankable and deploying the first commercial power plant projects, there is still a lot of work ahead of us because we think big and so does Soitec.
We are very well positioned, so we are looking optimistically into the future.
The company is growing dynamically and needs to grow even faster in the next two years.
We are continuously improving our components to increase efficiency and to lower cost.
Mid-term we will achieve system efficiencies of 35 percent in the field and realize a cost advantage of 10-20 percent on a kWh basis for our customers in comparison to conventional solar technologies.
Therefore, we plan to increase our production capacities to be able to reduce cost and deploy multi-megawatt power plants.
We are convinced that CPV will become a standard technology in high irradiation regions because of its definite advantages like constant load profile, less water usage and almost no heat degradation in hot climates.
