by Rebecca Walker — July 31, 2009 The San Diego campus of the University of California has begun producing electricity with recently installed solar panels made by Concentrix Solar that automatically track the sun as it crosses the daytime sky and concentrates sunlight onto hundreds of electricity-producing solar cells, each smaller than a shirt button.
The 220-square-foot, 5.75-kilowatt concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) panel mounted on a comovable platform atop a metal pole at UC San Diego’s East Campus Energy Complex was installed by Concentrix Solar, a German CPV technology manufacturer. Concentrix Solar’s new CX-75 technology has an average efficiency of 27.2 percent, or nearly twice that of conventional photovoltaic technology, according to the company.
The new Concentrix Solar CPV panels are a small part of a much larger 1-megawatt photovoltaic system previously installed on rooftops and parking garages at UC San Diego.
Concentrix Solar GmbH was founded in February 2005 as a spin-off company of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE. For more information, see the Web site.
