Concentrated Photo Voltaic Collecting Technology (multiple sun)

This technology is often the technology of choice for the power companies. The truth is, those PV panels you see on people's roofs can handle a lot more light than falls on them from our sun. This means, as long as you can keep them cool enough, you get a lot more bang for the buck (both dollars and carbon) if you can get more power out of each panel by throwing more light on them. The catch is that the sun moves and concentrating systems are typically very directional. So, if the lens or mirror alignment is not right, the PV panel sees less light instead of more.

This means concentrated PV needs mirrors or lenses that move and track the suns movement. This keeps maximum light exposure on the PV cells. Unfortunately, the concentrating system can get as expensive as the PV panels in which case there is not point to deal with the complexity of tracking the sun. Empirically speaking, common PV panels can handle up to 10 times the suns normal intensity without heating too much, provided there is basic ambient air flow over the panel. Thus the potential is to cut the cost of PV panels by up to 90 percent.

Power companies that create large concentrating power stations use special double junction PV cells that are expensive but almost twice as efficient as normal single junction PVs like those you see on roofs. Furthermore, these PVs are exposed to 100s to 1000s of times the suns normal intensity of light. This means they need elaborate cooling systems to keep the PV cells from damage. Overall though, the systems work well and trial plants have produced promising results.