Green Wombat

Photo: SolFocus

In The New York Times on Thursday, I wrote that Silicon Valley startup SolFocus is building the first large concentrating photovoltaic power plant in the United States:

The nation’s first big concentrating photovoltaic power plant is under construction in the California desert.

SolFocus, a Silicon Valley startup, is building the one-megawatt solar farm for Victor Valley College in Victorville, a desert community northeast of Los Angeles.

The company builds large solar panels that contain small mirrors that concentrate sunlight onto tiny, high-efficiency solar cells. Though more expensive than conventional solar cells, they use a fraction of the silicon and produce more electricity. That means less land is needed for a SolFocus power plant than one deploying conventional photovoltaic panels.

The SolFocus panels are mounted on trackers that follow the sun throughout the day. While SolFocus has built power plants in Europe, the California project is its first solar farm in the United States. Victor Valley College selected SolFocus after receiving competitive bids from several companies that install conventional photovoltaic panels and thin-film solar systems.

“After reviewing several options for a solar provider, SolFocus demonstrated that it could deliver the best value in solar energy for the college,” Robert Silverman, Victor Valley College’s president, said in a statement. The SolFocus power plant will supply about 30 percent of the college’s overall electricity demand.

SolFocus’ technology needs strong, direct sunlight to maximize electricity production. “If this deployment had been in somewhere in Northern California or Washington or Oregon, we probably wouldn’t have won the battle,” said Nancy Hartsoch, a vice president of marketing at SolFocus. Ms. Hartsoch added that in desert regions, the company’s technology generates electricity at prices competitive with traditional photovoltaic panels.

You can read the rest of the story here.