Mixed Greens: V3 Solar plans solar plant in Mildura

The developer of a potential “game-changing” solar PV technology has announced plans to construct a solar plant and a manufacturing facility at an industrial park at Thurla, south of Mildura. According to reports in the local newspaper, the Sunraysia Daily, and the website Energy Matters, V3 Solar Corporation has commissioned SIL Global to buy a 10 hectare site and begin construction of the manufacturing plant this year.

V3 SolarV3 Solar have developed so called conical “spin cells” (pictured right) that allow for a larger PV surface and potentially substantial gains in efficiency and power delivery.

The company says the rotating cones could harvest up to 20 times the amount of energy as normal flat-panel PV arrays. V3 Solar president Michael Neistat says the company plans to build a solar plant comprising 800,000 spin cell units, which would be the largest power station of its type in the world.

Silex says Australia favourable for CPV deals

Meanwhile, Silex Systems says it is well advanced in the construction of its 1.5MW demonstration plant in Mildura featuring its concentrated solar PV “dense array” technology. Construction is also continuing on its first project in the Middle East and Gulf regions, with a 1MW project at the Nofa equestrian sesort near Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia. The Mildura demonsration plant is a prelude to a 100MW facility in Mildura. Silex said the prospects for CPV project development in Australia are currently amongst the most favourable in the world.

“With the possibility of obtaining further support for project finance, implementation is potentially lower risk in the short term relative to offshore alternatives, which will be addressed in the medium term once product certification has been completed,” it said in its results statement last week. Silex shares jumped sharply last week after it announced that GE was looking to negotiate a commercial deal to use its laser nuclear enrichment technology.

US adds only renewables

According to the latest data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects, the US added 1,231MW of new in-service electrical generating capacity in January — nearly three times as much as a year earlier – and all from wind, solar, and biomass sources. Wind accounted for the largest share of the new capacity with six new “units” providing 958MW, followed by 16 units of solar (267MW), and 6 units of biomass (6MW). No new generating capacity was reported for any fossil fuel (i.e., natural gas, coal, oil) or nuclear power sources.

 

Comments

12 responses to “Mixed Greens: V3 Solar plans solar plant in Mildura”

  1. MIchael Berris Avatar
    MIchael Berris

    “Spin” is clearly the optimal word here. If only 1000w per square metre hits the earth’s surface, and we can already easily harvest 15% to 20% with a standard PV cell, I will need someone with a degree in magic to explain how we are going to get 20 times that without creating the solar equivalent of a perpetual motion machine, apparently magnifying the existing amount of power beyond 100% of all that is available!

    1. Greg Avatar
      Greg

      Hi Michael,

      Good question, there is a discussion over at ATA if you want to look, in summary I think the sceptics win over the optimists.

      http://www.ata.org.au/forums/topic/6098

      Cheers,
      Greg.

    2. John P Morgan Avatar
      John P Morgan

      I tend to agree.
      Assuming a cone module presents a reception area of 1 square metre to the incoming radiation, and the radiation intensity is 1kw/sq m, then the spin component must in some way represent an increase in transfer efficiency of 20 times.
      I am looking forward to hearing more about that!

      1. MIchael Berris Avatar
        MIchael Berris

        Not transfer efficiency surely. If only 1000w/sm arrives, you can’t transfer more than that which arrives without conjuring additional power from elsewhere. With 100% efficiency, you still only get 1000 w/sm!

    3. John Davis Avatar

      No it is not spin, it PR forgetting what is important to us. What they should be saying is that the normal problem with concentrated PV is the silicon gets too hot and doesn’t work. With the spinning cell it does not get hot. The area they refer to is the area of silicon with is half the cost of the unit.

      V3Solar has developed a new PV cell to produce electricity at only 8c /kwh. If this is true it will be a revolution.

      Their process uses lenses to concentrate sunlight 20X or 30X onto a small silicon cell.

      Normally this is a problem because the cell heats up and become less efficient. By spinning the cell, it moves away before it can heat up. The website is very vague on the technical details.

      They also claim to have improved the efficiency of the PV cell from 20% to 24%.

  2. Mike Avatar
    Mike

    Only on blogs is there a claim for violation of the laws of conservation of energy. No technology is above that.

    The fact you most of you do not understand the V3 innovation and what exactly is meant by the ability to FOCUS 20x more solar energy/SQ FT of PV material says volumes about most you and not about the V3Solar innovation.

    The fact that you think 15 to 20% efficiency is good is questionable as well.

    Shooting the messenger is for most of you bloggers is first port of call.
    Real scientist without vested are likely to thoroughly examine what information currently available and would and should be waiting for more data as it becomes available.

    1. Bob Avatar
      Bob

      While I agree with Mike that we can’t tell if this is real with the information now available, we can at least look at the claims.

      My guess is V3 are attempting to concentrate the sunlight something more than 20 times onto silicon solar cells (sorry Mike, the lab record for a silicon cell is about 25% and the best modules barely break 20% – with the vast majority well under that). They’d need to concentrate much higher to use the more efficient multi-junction cells economically. In any event, they must concentrate the light to reduce the costly silicon material. However, this causes excess heat and they then cool the cells by wind from spinning the device and pushing air. They’d also be cooling the cells because only half of them would be exposed at any time so they would be flashed on and off. That’s the fundamental flaw with this approach. You need to maximize the light collection of the equipment you put under the sun. With only half of it seeing the sun at any time, that’s not the way to cool a solar system. There is also the problem of the parasitic load of the motor that drives the spin. Air is actually heavy and hard to move which is why engineers focus on that in cars and planes. Bottom line is that when you add the complexity of concentration, and on off circuit cycle to balance, a big spinning fan and the fact that only half the cells are exposed to the light, what you have is pretty hard to make pencil out. My advice to these folks would be to focus on applications where aesthetics are important like for museums and not try to talk about 8c/kWh.

      The last time I made a prediction about a cylindrical solar collector where half the material wasn’t in the sun, I was right. In that application, they wanted to put it onto roofs and “simply” ask customers to paint their roofs white to reflect back onto the dark side. That one was called Solyndra and a disaster that could have been easily averted. These masters of hype hurt the entire solar industry in the end. I’m all for new inovations in solar, but like real scientists, let’s try to limit the claims of victory by folks like this until they have proven results.

      1. Mike Avatar
        Mike

        All valid issues well put Bob.
        Your reservations are their challenges.
        We shall see.

  3. Keef Wivanef Avatar
    Keef Wivanef

    No thanks…I’m still waiting for my SUNCUBE!!!

    WALOB!

  4. James Fisher Avatar
    James Fisher

    The idea of the spinning is to reduce the time the PV cell has concentrated light on it so it doesn’t heat up too much. They could get exactly the same effect by reducing the concentration on the cell.

    This sounds like a lot of nonsense but I have been proven wrong before. It reminds me of Firepower with their fuel efficiency tablet. They raised millions of dollars. Sometimes good spin can be a success in its own way.

  5. Ron Horgan Avatar
    Ron Horgan

    More information needed.
    From looking at earlier reports about rotating conical cells, the main claims were that a transformer was not required as the rate of rotation could generate AC current.
    It looked as though the cells required a little time to complete the conversion from absorbed photons to electricity. and that this “processing ” time would occur when the cells were facing away from the sun.

    The other factor was that rotating cone presented a superior collection surface without requiring any tracking.
    On the basis of these efficiency improvements an increased electricity yield of about 4 times that of a flat panel was claimed.

    The 20 fold improvement seems improbable without actual test results being published.Some real data would be good.

    1. Bob Avatar
      Bob

      I think you mean inverter, not transformer. Using the spinning device to match grid frequency is an even more unlikely claim. It would also mean you’d only have 1/3 of the cells visible to the sun for each phase making it even more uneconomical. Sounds good until you take a college level introduction to electrical engineering or talk to someone who understand grid power quality issues.

      While it should be possible to create a device that spins and concentrates light onto solar cells, and it could look pretty neat, I am sadly confident that it cannot be done in a way that can compete with simple, field proven PV panels mounted to a fixed rack. You can already get that technology in scale for 12c/kWh and find banks to finance it with many billions of dollars of development behind it.

      I take issue with James’s comment that such spin is its own measure of success. It is that concept that let people support the Solyndra’s, Suncubes and Sunrgi’s of the world. Let’s look for real solutions to the hard problems and not just suggest that an open mind is going to get us there despite contradictions with reality. Shame on these people for promoting misleading and false information. I only hope my comments can help some investor or supplier or employee to think twice before joining up with such a load of BS.

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