Focusing on Solar’s Cost
May 7, 2008 | Source: Technology Review
Solar startup Sunrgi says that it will soon be able to produce electricity from the sun at costs that are competitive with fossil-fuel generation.
The company has created a concentrated photovoltaic system that uses a lens to focus sunlight up to 2,000 times sun concentration onto tiny solar cells that can convert 37.5 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity. Stronger concentrations of sunlight allow engineers to use much smaller solar cells, making it more economical to use higher-efficiency–but higher-cost–cells.