Solar breakthroughs in Negros, Australia

MANILA, Philippines - Leading German photovoltaic (PV) solution and service provider Conergy has again been tapped to build two solar parks in Negros Occidental by San Carlos Solar Energy (SaCaSol), the joint venture between local clean energy developer Bronzeoak Philippines and European-based investment and advisory firm ThomasLloyd.

Conergy has been awarded by SaCaSol the contract to build two solar parks SaCaSol I C/D, and SaCaSol II A, in San Carlos and La Carlota, both in Negros Occidental, respectively, under a turnkey arrangement.

In Sydney, Australian scientists meanwhile said they had made a breakthrough in increasing the efficiency of solar panels, which they hope could eventually lead to cheaper sources of renewable energy.

In what the University of New South Wales described as a world first, the researchers were able to convert more than 40 percent of sunlight hitting the panels into electricity.

“This is the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion into electricity,” UNSW professor Martin Green said in a statement earlier this month.

“We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry.”

Conergy will be responsible for the overall planning, engineering, design, project delivery as well as the component supply for the two power plants in Negros. For construction work, Conergy is collaborating with its local partner, SCHEMA Konsult Inc.

The two new solar plants will add a total of 41 megawatts of solar capacity to the Visayas grid after their completion by next June.

SaCaSol I C/D, an extension of SaCaSol I A/B, will have an installed capacity of 23 megawatts and generate over 34,300 megawatt-hours per year, enough electricity for 14,300 homes.

The facility will save about 21,033 tons of carbon (CO2) emissions and lie on a 324,214-square-meter land, adjacent to the first 22-MW SaCaSol I A/B solar park (SaCaSol I) in San Carlos City which began operations last May.

The second solar power plant, SaCaSol II A, will be situated in Barangay Cubay, La Carlota. It will have an installed capacity of 18 MW and feed approximately 26,529 MWH of clean electricity into the local grid annually, comparable to the power requirement of over 11,000 households. This second plant will reduce CO2 emissions by over 16,200 tons per year and cover a total area of around 244,260 square meters.

“Sacasol is moving ahead with its expansion and is excited to be doing so with Conergy, with whom it has worked well in the past. With the right partners, the projects can be delivered on time to meet the country’s growing energy needs,” Bronzeoak Philippines president Jose Maria Zabaleta Jr. said.

Alexander Lenz, Conergy Asia and Middle East president, said that they were excited over the increasing recognition of the need to tap renewable solar power in the Philippines.

The two projects bring Conergy’s total contracted volume in the Philippines to 73 MW, with 63 MW coming from SaCaSol.

Boosting conversion levels

While traditional methods use one solar cell, which limits the conversion of sunlight to electricity to about 33 percent, the newer technology splits the sunlight into four different cells, which boosts the conversion levels, Green told AFP.

The record efficiency level was achieved in tests in Sydney and replicated at the United States government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the university said.

The prototype technology is set to be harnessed by Australian company RayGen Resources for solar power towers, which use sun-tracking mirrors to focus sunlight on a tall building.

Green is hopeful the technology can also eventually be used for solar panels mounted on people’s roofs, which he said currently had a 15 to 18 percent efficiency rate.

“The panels that you have on the roof of your home, at the moment they just have a single cell but eventually they’ll have several different cells... and they’ll be able to improve their efficiency to this kind of level,” he told AFP.

Green said strides in technology made in the solar industry such as the higher conversion levels were helping to drive down the cost of renewable energy.

He was confident that in a decade, solar-generated electricity would be cheaper than that produced by coal.  – Rainier Allan Ronda