Congratulations Shane and Matt

Shane and Matt Concentrating Solar Science Fair Project

Shane and Matt are grade 8 students who contacted me several months ago.  They had read about Morgan Solar in the Toronto Star and liked the idea of doing their Science Fair project on solar concentrators.  They were hoping to do some tests and experimentation with an LSO optic, to compare their results from testing with other concentrating technologies.  I was impressed with their project, their initiative and agreed to help them in whatever way I could.

They spent the better part of a Saturday afternoon in our lab setting up an experiment and taking measurements, and from the looks of their display, they put allot of time and energy into their work.  Well, at the city finals at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, they won a silver medal.  We’re proud to have been able to offer them a little help and support.  Good work guys, and I have to say that I’m glad I have a 20 year head start on kids like these, I wouldn’t want to be competing with them, that’s for sure.

Science Fair Display - Shedding Light on Solar Concentrators

New World Record for PV Efficiency

That is very cool, as has been reported on a number of sites, Scientists at NREL’s Solar Energy Research Facility have broken the record for cell efficiency.  This is great news, and better still that they got this efficiency at reasonably high concentrations of 326 suns.  So, my questions are, how much concentration can these things take and when can I get my hands on some?

The technical details sound interesting and it’s assembled slightly differently to a normal triple-junction cell, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

My favourite quote from the article:

The new cell is a natural candidate for the space satellite market and for terrestrial concentrated photovoltaic arrays, which use lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight onto the solar cells.

It seems that every time someone mentions CPV, they add “lenses or mirrors”.  There are other ways to do it, and I would venture to say, better ways to do it.

New Product Info on Website

We just uploaded the changes to the product page to give a little more information on the Sun Simba HCPV. We’re going to eventually be adding spec sheets and technical specifications, but for now we’re just giving a thorough overview. We’ve included a couple of images people haven’t seen yet, and we’re getting a few more images made in the meantime.

Back from hiatus

Hi everyone, sorry for the posting hiatus, but things have been insane around here.  For the next couple of weeks there will be semi-regular posts here, but for now it’s just a brief note hello and a couple of updates.

Updates

The Earth Rangers Centre Demo Site

Everything is on track for this, and right now it looks like the first panels will be installed in the third week of September, with the remainder of the panels in place by second or third week of October.  We’ve already received the tracker and had it delivered to the site, and we’re waiting on the delivery of the first batch of prototype optics from our provider and we’re all set for the assembly process.  The installed has been booked and we’ll be mounting the tracker in a few weeks.  Exciting stuff for us.  We’ll be putting pictures here as soon as they’re available.

Solar Power International 2008

We’ve finalized our booth plan and we’re going be to showing a prototype of our Sun Block solar wall system (more details on that later) and a small version of the Sun Simba HCPV.  Should be pretty cool.

Sun Simba HCPV Details

We’re waiting on the go ahead from the lawyers regarding our patents, but in a week or two we’ll be publishing details on the Sun Simba HCPV system.  We’ve shown it to a couple of people in confidence, and people are pretty impressed.

That’s it for now.