Energy Innovations' Fully Integrated Sunflower System

Energy Innovations, the same company that released the ray tracker recently unveiled a concentrated photovoltaics (CPV) product designed for commercial roof tops. The Energy Innovations Sunflower concentrates sunlight similar to a magnifying glass onto highly efficient solar cells. Although we have discussed these types of products in the past, the SunFlower is the only CPV product on the market that has received UL certification!

This means soon the SunFlower will qualify for state incentives, which makes the SunFlower a much more sought after CPV product. The SunFlower system not only magnifies the sun onto high-efficiency cells to generate extreme output for low cost, but also has a built in tracking system, enabling it to follow the sun through out the day, to increase overall efficiency even further. The tracking system is powered by the energy that the SunFlower creates and is compatible with non-roof penetrating mounting systems, making the installation easy and more affordable.

















As you can see the SunFlower produces more energy through out the course of a day and uses less silicon (the expensive element of the solar panel) thus making the system more cost effective than traditional PV. Since concentrating solar power systems only work in areas with direct rays of sunlight, the systems are most cost effective in areas such as the southwestern us and Hawaii. The light is concentrated 800x onto solar cells that have a 35% efficiency rate!

The first units will ship in early 2009, and we're excited to see some of these units deployed in the real world to see how well they will handle heat. What I don't see on this product is a heatsink or cooling system. How do you think the SunFlower stays cool when its concentrating the sun 800x?

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