Matthew Meares, Project Finance Director for Amonix, recently contributed to NREL's Renewable Energy Project Finance blog by Michael Mendelsohn.

Click here to read.

By Rachel McMahon, Director of Regulatory Affairs

Water World Day took place on March 22nd and is a reminder of the water challenges that our world faces. We are in the midst of a water crisis and the Southwest US is no stranger to these issues. According to a recent article published on the Los Angeles Daily News by Gretchen McClain and H. David Nahai, California's water system, designed to supply water to 16 million people, struggles to serve nearly 40 million residents. Not only is the population demand for water increasing, the aging infrastructure is causing an annual 10% loss. 

By Ken Kostok, VP of Field Operations at Amonix

Amonix is working closely with the construction companies that install its equipment to optimize the installation process. In one of our most recent installations, a 2 MW system in the southwest US, we measured over 500kW AC per day being installed by a two crane system. The time-lapse video of this quick installation process can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm_9pyGY_Ko.

We were already installing our CPV solar systems in much less time than it takes to install traditional PV projects. Traditional PV projects typically involve a large number of people carrying panels out to custom-built racks in the middle of a field – a time consuming and potentially erroneous process. Very large projects, for example 250 MW, can take 2-3 years to install – increasing costs, increasing risk and making them more difficult to finance. Our method of installing a large capacity system (now 60KW AC) atop a pole makes it possible to install a 250 MW project in well under a year with a very modest amount of labor. That totally changes the risk profile on larger solar projects, by using fast-installing CPV.

By Brian Robertson, Amonix CEO

The most compelling advantage of solar PV in the WDG model lies in the ability of smaller projects to get financing. Because smaller projects can fit more easily and flexibly into the transmission/distribution infrastructure, there is far less risk associated with them, which translates into far less financing cost.

This fact is not lost on financiers of utility-scale solar projects, especially in the current economic climate. For example, there are just three solar projects with capacities above 20MW currently in operation in the United States: KRCD Solar Farm in California, with a capacity of 40MW; DeSoto in Florida, at 35MW; and Blythe Solar in California, at 21MW.While there are larger solar projects in the pipeline, many of them are stalled due to lack of financing, or transmission/ distribution constraints as well as permitting issues.

By Carla Pihowich, Sr. Director of Marketing & Government Affairs

A highlight of President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night was a call to Congress to pass a mandate on clean energy. He said, “So tonight, I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas.” 

This is a very powerful statement from the President and unprecedented in its call for both a national mandate and for its inclusion of nuclear, clean coal and natural gas in the nation’s clean energy mix.

Amonix welcomes such high-level attention on clean energy and the attempt to level the playing field for alternatives to oil as a source of power for generating electricity. And we’re confident that utility-scale PV solar – and especially CPV solar – has earned a place at the table.

We look forward to being part of the conversation about national energy policy that began last night and has already lit up the blogo- and Twitterspheres.

By Marc Cortez, Director of Product Marketing for Amonix

There’s a scene near the end of the first Toy Story movie when a villain kidnaps Woody and Buzz Lightyear, straps a rocket to Buzz’s back and prepares to destroy him. Woody stages a heroic rescue, but not in time: the two miss Andy’s car as it drives away to his family’s new house.

In a last ditch effort to catch up with Andy, Woody positions Buzz’s visor between the sun and the rocket still strapped to Buzz’s back, and uses concentrated sunlight to light the rocket’s fuse. Of course, the rocket carries them right to Andy’s car, where Buzz lets go of the rocket and Woody and Buzz fall through the car’s sunroof, landing in a box of toys. Andy, Woody and Buzz are elated to be reunited – end of Toy Story, roll the credits.

I had the privilege of presenting last Friday morning at the Photovoltaics Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona, and I opened my presentation with this scene from Toy Story. What do CPV solar and Woody’s quick thinking have in common? Here it is: The idea of concentrating sunlight to generate energy is something so simple that even a child can understand it.

By Brian Robertson, Amonix CEO

Not all solar is created equal. Let me explain further what I mean. While both are solar technologies, PV when compared to concentrating solar thermal (CSP) has some compelling advantages in a wholesale distributed generation (WDG) model. PV uses no water in the production of energy, requires far less land and uses land more efficiently. Conversely, CSP requires large amounts of water, vast open spaces and flat land. While there is certainly much debate about whether RPS mandates should be met with PV versus CSP water & solar technology, the fact is PV is a much better fit for the WDG model because it can easily scale up and down in size, from under 1MW to over 100MW. CSP plants by contrast are typically 50MW or larger.

By Geoff Kinsey, Director of Research & Development, Amonix

The news reported this week in greentechsolar: that our friends at Solar Junction have achieved an NREL-verified efficiency of 40.9% for the company’s standard production triple junction CPV solar cells bodes well for CPV in 2011.

We’ve often said that one of the technology advances in CPV solar over the next one to three years will be efficiency improvements to III-V multijunction cells and how they are integrated into commercially available CPV solar systems. At Amonix, we are currently at 39% efficiency at the cell level, which translates into 31% at the module level and 27% at the system level. At these levels of efficiency, CPV has by far the greatest efficiency of any solar technology – and the news from Solar Junction underscores that there is plenty of headroom for CPV efficiency in the future.

By Brian Robertson, Amonix CEO

In a previous blog post, I introduced the advantages of the wholesale distributed generation (WDG) model of generating electricity. This week, I will address the role of renewables and especially the role of solar. This is important because while the WDG model is an optimal deployment model for solar, as it can scale up as well as down, this is a flexibility not enjoyed by many other power generating technologies.

The rise of renewables is due to a confluence of market factors and bi-partisan concerns. This includes a rise in global demand for energy, particularly in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China); national security concerns that lead to a desire for energy independence; and a need to reduce carbon emissions. Add to these concerns the state of America’s energy infrastructure: widespread transmission congestion (affecting the cost and reliability of delivered energy), and aging conventional power plants that will soon require huge capital investments to modernize, rebuild or replace.

Against this backdrop, 30 U.S. states and the District of Columbia now have aggressive Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) mandates