From a company PR release
A new solar energy system will soon make it possible to produce electricity at a wholesale cost of 5-cents per kWh (kilowatt hour)....competitive with the wholesale cost of producing electricity using fossil fuels and a fraction of the current cost of solar energy.
XCPV (Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics), a system that concentrates the equivalent of more than 1,600 times the sun's energy onto the world's most efficient solar cells, was announced. "Solar Power at 5 cents per kWh would be a world-changing breakthrough," said Craig Goodman
The theory seems reasonable, that is, concentrate the radiation on a small efficient conversion device. This allows for an expensive conversion device to be practical because the concentrators are relatively less expensive. However the concentrators will still need to take up a lot of acreage and we still need much better energy storage. |