Australia’s RayGen says CPV can deliver at $60/MWh by Giles Parkinson

A new Australian solar start-up predicts that its concentrated solar photovoltaic technology (CPV) will undercut both conventional flat plate solar PV technologies and fossil fuel technologies.

The Melbourne-based RayGen Resources has raised $1.6 million in a funding round from private investors, including software entrepreneur Craig Winkler, which will allow it to match grants from the Victorian government and the Australian Solar Institute (totalling $2.75 million).

This money will be used to build a 2kW prototype and then a 200kW pilot plant – touted to be the first commercial design n the world to combine high efficiency solar cells with a low cost heliostat collector systems. It predicts that it can bring costs from CSP to $60 a megawatt hour and below.

The ASI, which is contributing $1.75 million of the $3.6 million pilot project cost, said RayGen’s C2PV technology opens up an “immediate opportunity” for a “step reduction” in the cost of large scale solar energy.

By deploying large arrays of relatively inexpensive mirrors, the ASI believes that Raygen can side-step some of the cost issues facing other solar technologies, including concentrated solar thermal (which focuses energy onto one spot so that steam can be generated to drive a turbine).

The attraction of CPV is that it can focus more energy onto highly efficient solar cells, which have an efficiency rating double that of conventional flat panel PV. It means that while cells are expensive, the small amount needed results in reduced systems costs and the long run cost of energy (LCOE) could be around 30 per cent below that of flat panel PV by 2016, according to a report released by IMS Research last week.