Optony, U.S. NREL in concentrating solar PV project

Silicon Valley startup Optony has teamed up with the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., to look at concentrating photovoltaic systems.

The national lab, known as NREL, said the project will design concentrating photovoltaic devices that are compatible with Optony's optical system.

"We’re just embarking on this project with Optony, and this is our first attempt at merging a concentrator system with our next-generation converter technology," said Scott Ward, a senior scientist at NREL specializing in concentrating solar power. "But we have reason to believe that it will lead to low-cost electricity."

The joint project between NREL and Optony has received $250,000 from the Department of Energy's Technology Commercialization and Development Fund.

Instead of using silicon or gallium arsenide solar cells, the project will use thin-film solar cells to be developed during the collaboration, based on technologies originally developed at NREL.

"The cheaper thin-film cells and low-cost optics should lead to a less expensive product or a lower dollar per watt of electricity," said Miguel Contreras, a senior scientist at NREL.

Once the project completes the design of the concentrating photovoltaic devices, NREL and Optony will put the system into an interconnected array for study and evaluation of the new technology under real-world conditions at NREL's outdoor testing facility.

Dong Wang, VP at Optony, will be working on-site at NREL as part of the project. "The system will not only be cheaper to manufacture, but also more reliable," he said.

The national lab said that when they complete the project, they hope to have a concentrating photovoltaic product that will be directly transferable to a manufacturing environment.