Solar Systems Generation Pty. Ltd.

Solar Systems Generation Pty. Ltd. Proposed 154-MW power station (above) will use concentrating PV system demonstrated in northern Australia (top above).

Solar Systems Generation Pty. Ltd., Melbourne, received a $71.5-million grant for the project under the Australian federal government’s Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund to demonstrate the commercial potential of new energy technologies or processes. The Victorian government will also support the project with a grant of $47.7 million.

Nearly 20,000 sun-tracking mirrors, called heliostats, will focus light on nearly 250 receivers housing nearly 63,000 photovoltaic modules. The high-efficiency PV cell arrays were originally developed by Spectrolab Inc., a wholly-owned Boeing Co. subsidiary, for use in NASA space missions.

“This is a new generation of solar technology,” says John Lasich, technical director for Solar Systems. “The secret is to be able to make a solar power module work about 1,500 times harder than typical solar panels. If you can do this at high efficiency using low-cost materials, you have the recipe for an infinite supply of clean energy at an affordable price.”

The proprietary CS500 receiver is only a small area of high-efficiency PV. A 35-kW CS500 dish has a PV area of 0.23 sq meters, whereas 35 kW of traditional flat plate would use about 350 sq m, Solar Systems officials say.

The CS500 dish concentrator PV unit has 112 curved reflecting mirrors mounted on a steel frame. The mirror profile, mounting framework and solar receiver are designed to deliver concentrated sunlight to each PV module. The system’s tracking mechanism allows electricity generation when the sun is only 5° above the horizon. A control system keeps each dish pointing to the sun and adjusts the direct-current voltage to maximize electricity output. A cooling system keeps the solar cells at 60°C to optimize the performance of the PV modules. Solar Systems plans to use cells of a high-current-density design, which recently attained better than 40% efficiency in the laboratory.

“We still hold the record for non-concentrating silicon cells at 24.7% but the triple-junction cells are now above 30% for non-concentrated light,” says Martin Green, executive research director of the Australian Research Council Photovoltaics Center of Excellence at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.