“We are just at the beginning of expanding this program. In a year or two it could become 20-25 percent percent of our business,” said Howard Wenger, president of SunPower, during a conference call with analysts to discuss the company’s second-quarter earnings.

The lease program has grown quickly and prompted the Silicon Valley solar panel maker and power project developer to go out and raise more money to finance installations within the program. Just before disclosing its earnings, SunPower announced that it had lined up $325 million from Citi and Credit Suisse to do that. Citi is an early partner for SunPower’s program: it contributed $80 million to the $105 million fund that SunPower announced last summer as it began to offer residential leases through its dealers.

The lease program provides an average of 10 percent return on the investment (after tax), said SunPower CEO Tom Werner. The way the program is structured, SunPower owns the solar equipment and leases it to the financial institutions that funds the installations. The banks then sublease the solar panel systems to homeowners and make money from lease payments and federal tax credits. SunPower also receives lease payments from homeowners but only during the second half of each lease period.

Homeowners like solar lease deals because they only have to put up a small amount — or even no upfront costs — to have solar panels installed on their rooftops. They then pay a monthly fee for the electricity from the solar panels. A lease generally runs 20 years and, depending on the terms of the agreements, consumers could pay to own the solar panels or pay for only the electricity throughout the life of the contracts.

Startups such as SunRun and SolarCity have helped to make this type of financial agreement popular among homeowners and attractive to investors, especially in states with generous incentives. Lease financing is not only coming from banks but also from corporate investors such as Google. But unlike SunRun, SolarCity and other startups who install or run lease programs, SunPower also makes the solar panels.

In California, the largest solar market in the country, solar leases accounted for over half of the residential solar energy systems installed in 2011, according to state regulators.

While SunPower’s lease program is doing well and the company is reducing its manufacturing costs at a faster pace than it had planned, the company has yet to return to making profits. SunPower posted $595.9 million in revenue for the second quarter, up from $592.3 million from the year-ago period. It recorded $84.2 million in net losses, or $0.71 per share, for the second quarter, compared with $147.9 million in net losses, or $1.51 per share, from the second quarter of 2011.

The company expects to generate $545 million to $620 million in revenue and net losses of $0.10 to $0.25 per share, for the third quarter. For 2012, it’s forecasting $2.4 billion to $2.6 billion in revenue.

Photo courtesy of SunPower

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The funding came more than a year after it raised about $65 million in a round, some of which went into setting up a new factory and headquarters in Fremont. Solaria develops solar panels that use lenses to concentrate the sunlight onto silicon solar cells, a process the company says  reduces the need of silicon cells by roughly half. The optics are made of a glass sheet, under which are solar cells that have gone through slicing and other steps to become strips.

Solaria has also designed trackers to go with its solar panels and is selling the equipment separately or as part of the package. Trackers tilt the solar panels to follow the sun’s movement throughout the day, and they are used in larger scale projects built for utilities or other businesses. Solaria has built various configurations with its products at its headquarters to show off different solar array designs (see our slide show).

Using trackers adds costs, but it also boosts power generation, a benefit that could be well worth the investment, particularly in markets with incentives based on power production. But Solaria is pushing its relatively new technology at a time when the global market is beset by a glut of solar panels. Prices for solar panels have fallen so quickly – by 30 to 40 percent – that many manufacturers have posted losses and expect tough times to continue in 2012. Solar panel makers are boosting their research and development work to create more efficient solar panels in order to set themselves apart and command higher prices for their products.

The company is among a breed of developers who sought to create alternatives to conventional silicon solar panels. The solar industry experienced a shortage of silicon around 2005 when it was growing and competing against the chip industry for the same raw material, which fetched hundreds of dollars per kilogram. Some companies turned to materials such as copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS). The price of silicon has plummeted in recent years to around $30 per kilogram now on the spot market.

Others began to experiment with materials such as germanium and gallium-arsenide, which are more expensive than silicon but can squeeze far more electricity from sunlight. To use these highly efficient materials, developers rely on mirrors and lenses to concentrate sunlight, so they can get the same amount of energy while using a smaller amount of materials. Solaria has opted to stick with the cheaper silicon but still adds the concentrating optics.

The company was founded in 1999, but didn’t start working on concentrating technology until much later. Its engineers first used acrylic for lenses and placed them under a protective glass layer in the panel. They then decided to ditch acrylic and use only glass for the optics and spent 2009 finalizing a commercial design. Dan Shugar, who was president of PowerLight and then head of SunPower’s project development business (SunPower bought PowerLight in 2006), came to Solaria as CEO in early 2010.

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SunPower calls the new offering its C7 Tracker, which includes a set of curved mirrors that concentrate and direct sunlight onto a row of solar cells to produce electricity (see video). This whole set up sits on top of a tracker that rotates the mirrors and cells to follow the sun’s movement – CPV technology works best under direct sunlight in cloudless days.

The new system concentrates the sunlight seven times and uses SunPower’s silicon solar cells, which are 22.8 percent efficient. The use of the mirrors means SunPower can use smaller solar cells to produce the same amount of energy. The company says a 400 MW project that uses its C7 Tracker will need less than 70 MW of its solar cells. The C7 Tracker also comes with a wireless monitoring and control system.

A historical connection

Using trackers has been a SunPower specialty. The company has designed trackers for its conventional silicon solar panels for years. The company often uses the trackers for large-scale projects on the ground (as opposed to the rooftop). Its tracker design experience is an advantage. A tracker for a CPV system must have a precise aim at the sun to harvest direct sunlight. A tracker for conventional solar panels doesn’t have to be so accurate in order to produce ample power because those solar panels can make use of indirect and reflected light.

SunPower is working on lining up utilities as customers – the company not only sells equipment to distributors and developers, it also develops solar farms.

The company made it known that it was interested in CPV earlier and showed off its early designs at conferences last year. It’s no stranger to the technology long before that. SunPower worked on a CPV technology in the early 90s but found little customer interest. It then shifted its focus to develop solar cell technology that led SunPower to become the producer of the most efficient silicon solar cells today.

Most of the solar panels today are made with silicon cells. The price of silicon used to be sky high about six years ago, and that prompted a slew of startups and investors to find ways to reduce the cost of solar cell materials. CPV seemed promising because less solar cell materials are needed when you can use mirrors to concentrate sunlight and produce the same amount of electricity. But as with many early-stage technology approaches, many CPV companies took more time and money to nail down their designs, and during that time the price of silicon fell dramatically and rendered traditional solar panels a whole lot cheaper.

Gaining respect

In the past two years, some CPV companies were able to complete the first installations of their equipment and that was important to show there was customer interest for CPV. SolFocus built a 1 MW project at a community college in California in 2010 – that was the largest CPV project in the country then. Rival Amonix has since broken that record with a 2 MW system it completed earlier this year. The company also is supplying its equipment for a 30 MW project in Colorado by Cogentrix, which has gotten a $90.6 million federal loan guarantee for the project.

Those early installations, if they perform as promised, will help to convince banks and utilities to invest in CPV technology.

The use of curved mirrors to concentrate sunlight isn’t a new concept – many companies have been developing various versions of concentrating solar technologies that use flat or curved mirrors. Companies such as BrightSource Energy uses the mirrors to concentrate the sunlight to heat water and produce steam, which is then piped to drive a turbine generator for electricity production (this type of technology is called concentrating solar thermal).

Although CPV technology is competitive against other solar technologies, it can deliver that cheaper electricity only in parts of the world that see a lot of direct sunlight. In other words, the technology doesn’t like cloud covers, where as conventional solar panels can still produce some electricity on cloudy days. As a result, the best locations for CPV power projects include the American Southwest, parts of Middle East, southern Europe and Australia.

Photos courtesy of SunPower (first two images) and Amonix

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The opportunity

The U.S. military is the No. 1 consumer of oil in the entire world and also the biggest spender. The organization has initiated a goal to consume 25 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025. Pike Research projects that renewable energy spending will grow from $1.8 billion a year today to $26.8 billion in 2030, and recently the U.S. military established the Energy Initiatives Office Task Force, specifically for large-scale renewable energy projects, which will invest an estimated $7.1 billion over the next ten years.

This comes at a time when renewable energy is at a crossroads. The popular Treasury Grant could expire this year, and many statewide incentives are drying up. On top of that, the economy is looking unpredictable at best, and with massive cuts to government spending likely to hit all federal agencies, the DOD may suddenly become the most important agency to renewable energy adoption.

Where does solar fit in?

The military is inking deals across the entire cleantech industry. One obvious technology is biofuels, which the Air Force and Navy are developing for their fleets. The army is also adopting solid state lighting and next-generation batteries.

Domestically, military bases are working to test wind and solar. The technology they use may ultimately replace trucking drums of fuel to military bases in the Middle East, the aforementioned cause of many casualties. Although wind may prove tactically insecure, solar could be a perfect fit for many military bases.

At Skyline Solar we believe concentrating photovoltaics (CPV) are the best fit for military bases in the American Southwest. CPV utilizes sun-tracking technology and mirrors to concentrate the sunlight, which when combined take advantage of the strong sun throughout the day and can be built in projects from a few hundred kilowatts to multiple megawatts. These military bases not only have flat, open land perfect for midsize solar installations but also provide a good test site for similar bases established in the Middle East.

Other types of solar technology, while not without their advantages, have issues that may be detrimental to military bases. Concentrating solar thermal (CST) technology, which uses concentrated sunlight to heat a fluid and spin a conventional turbine, requires more than 100 times more water per watt than CPV, which is not realistic for desert settings.

Furthermore, CST plants are only economical on a large scale and usually take years to build. In contrast, CPV can be built in modular pieces of a plant quickly. Smaller plants distributed in various areas — also known as distributed generation (DG) — are more secure for the military’s purposes and also less financially risky. On the other hand, standard silicon PV has seen reduced costs and has the longest track record, but it doesn’t provide the same cost per watt that CPV can deliver in desert environments.

Obstacles

There are still some considerations for solar to work for the military. Storage will need to advance and become cheaper and more powerful to make solar viable without backup sources of power. The U.S. DoD is working on this, but it is still something the CPV industry will look to solve. Furthermore, the military adheres to the Buy American Clause, so any solar panel manufacturer must be delivering a product manufactured in the U.S. for consideration.

The military’s continuing advocacy for renewable energy is a boon for the entire industry and could potentially save thousands of lives in future combat scenarios. Smart solar pros are already learning how their technology can work for the military, to fight for a greener and more secure tomorrow.

Bob MacDonald is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer for Skyline Solar. MacDonald has a proven track record of driving revenue growth, building market focus and optimizing operational efficiencies with emerging high-tech ventures. He led the product marketing program at SolFocus; prior to SolFocus he co-founded and served as VP of Sales and Marketing for Onetta, a leading optical amplifier company. During his tenure, he secured funding from Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners. Earlier in his career, MacDonald started the telecom components division of New Focus, a division of Newport Corporation, a leader in photonics development and manufacturing, which enabled the company’s successful IPO and secondary offerings. He holds a BSEE from Brown University, MSEE from Stanford University, and MS and Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University.

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The loan guarantee will help fund the 30 MW Alamosa Solar Generating Project being built by Cogentrix, which plans to use concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) panels from Amonix, a company backed by venture capitalists like Kleiner Perkins. Cogentrix announced a deal to sell electricity from the project to power company Xcel Energy last August.

UPDATE: Alamosa is the  largest, proposed CPV project in the world among the largest proposed CPV projects, and that tells you something about how difficult it has been to promote the use of CPV in power plant development. Many of the utility-scale solar power projects under development these days are more than 100 MW and use conventional solar panels or solar thermal technologies, which rely on mirrors to concentrate the light to heat fluid for producing steam, which then drives turbines to generate electricity. Through its loan guarantee program, the DOE has helped to finance power projects using emerging technologies that have a hard time attracting private investments.

CPV technology is supposed to generate electricity for less than the other more commonly use solar technologies. By concentrating light, a CPV system uses far less solar cells and that is supposed to cut cost. But the price of solar cells for conventional solar panels has dropped more than half in recent years thanks mainly to generous government incentives, primarily in Europe, that boost solar panel installations. Solar panels can go on rooftops while CPV, with its solar panels that are several times larger than conventional ones as well as bulky trackers, are mostly destined for installation on the ground.

The largest CPV project built in the U.S. last year was a 1 MW project by CPV technology developer SolFocus at a community college in California. Last month, Amonix bested that record when it announced a 2 MW project it co-developed and completed with Granite Construction and University of Arizona at the university campus last month. The electricity goes to the local utility, Tucson Electric Power.

Amonix was actually founded in 1989 and carried out some small projects in the U.S. and Europe before lining up money to build a commercial-size factory and headquarters in California in 2008. It also benefited from the federal stimulus funding and received $5.8 million in manufacturing tax credit to help build a factory north of Las Vegas. The company, which got a new CEO, Brian Robertson, in November 2009 and then raised a B round of $129.4 million led by Kleiner Perkins last year, is set to do a ribbon cutting at the new factory on May 17.

Amonix’s technology uses Fresnel lenses to concentrate the sunlight 500 times onto triple-junction solar cells. Each system, with 53-kilowatt (AC) of generation capacity, is made up of 7 giant modules mounted on a dual-axis tracker. Each module measures 10-ft. by 49-ft and contains 36 sets of lenses and receivers; each receiver contains 30 solar cells. Carla Pihowich, vice president of marketing at Amonix, told me last year that the company was using cells with 39 percent efficiency, which leads to 31 percent efficiency for each module and 25 percent efficiency overall for each system.

Completing the Alamosa project also will be a milestone for Cogentrix, which is owned by Goldman Sachs and owns mostly fossil fuel power plants in the U.S. and hydroelectric power plants in Turkey. Cogentrix’s current solar power plant holding consists of a 43 MW solar thermal project built in the 1980s.

Goldman has been criticized for hogging public land in the western U.S. without having submitted firm plans to develop them for solar. A public records review by the Associated Press last fall showed that Goldman’s energy development company had made more development claims for the Bureau of Land Management land in the southwestern U.S. than any other company. BLM’s land leasing system is first-come, first-served and makes it possible for developers to apply and hold onto land.

Photo courtesy of Amonix

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Chromasun's Collector at Convention in 2009

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The 150 MW project, which will use gear from CPV tech maker Concentrix Solar, dwarfs the previous largest planned CPV project of 30 MW project announced last year. Project developer Cogentrix Energy said it would use equipment from California-based Amonix to build that 30 MW power plant and sell electricity to Utility Public Service Co. in Colorado.

A CPV system relies on mirror and lenses to concentrate and direct sunlight onto solar cells, which typically use multi-layers of gallium arsenide, germanium and other materials in the III-V semiconductor group. These multi-junction solar cells are expensive but much more efficient at converting sunlight into electricity than silicon solar cells that are common in solar panels on the market today. The use of optics to concentrate the sunlight makes it possible to use only slivers of the multi-junction solar cells.

Although CPV technology sounds promising, it has struggled to attract project developers. One key reason is the competing solar technologies, such as solar panels using silicon solar cells, have become much cheaper in the last two years than they were five years ago when CPV seemed like a cost-effective alternative. Plus, project investors tend to shy away from new technologies until they see proof that the new technologies can deliver good returns.

“CPV is an example of a type of technology that the (U.S. Department of Energy’s) loan guarantee program can help to bring projects to fruition and reduce risks perceived by the private sector,” said Tom Kimbis, director of policy and research at the Solar Energy Industries Association.

The largest CPV installation in the U.S. currently is the 1 MW project completed by SolFocus at Victor Valley College in Southern California last year. CPV technology is more suitable for sunny and dry climates because its equipment works best in cloudless days. Large-scale projects that serve utilities are more likely to be built in the southwestern region of the country, said Shayle Kann, managing director of solar practice at GTM Research.

The Tenaska project is set to rise on 1,057 acres in Southern California’s Imperial County and will be named Imperial Solar Energy Center West. The company expects to complete the power plant in 2015 and has signed a 25-year power sales agreement with SDG&E, which lags behind two other main utilities in the state in meeting a mandate to buy 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010 (the utilities have until 2013 to meet that requirement).

SDG&E was able to get to 11.9 percent of its electricity from clean power in 2010, compared with 19.4 percent by Southern California Edison and 17.7 percent by Pacific Gas and Electric, according to the California Public Utilities Commission. The three utilities also have been signing power purchase agreements or planning their own projects to meet a 2020 requirement to raise that clean power level to 33 percent.

Concentrix’s parent company, France-based Soitec, plans to build a CPV equipment factory in the San Diego area that will have 200 MW of annual production capacity, the company said. The factory will make the equipment for the 150 MW Imperial project, and Soitec expects to start delivering equipment in early 2013. But the factory project appears to be contingent on Tenaska getting an Energy Department loan guarantee for the power plant project. Neither Tenaska nor Soitec disclosed the cost of the power plant or the power plant project.

Photo courtesy of Concentrix

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Morgan Solar at Solar Power International 2010

Morgan Solar, a concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) startup, is raising a B round of between $20-25 million and hopes to complete the fundraising by as early as April, Nicolas Morgan, VP of business development at the company, told us.

The funding will help the Canadian company start a new factory in California to produce the optics for its CPV panels. Morgan Solar, founded in 2007, hopes to start production by the middle of this year, and the factory is set to have 5.5 MW of annual capacity.

The company previously raised $9.2 million in private capital and $10.3 million from the Canadian and U.S. governments. Its investors include energy giant Iberdrola and maker of factory equipment for plastic products, Nypro.

CPV technology uses mirrors and lenses to concentrate light onto solar cells to produce electricity. The concentration makes it possible to use smaller solar cells and save money. A typical CPV system is made up of one panel containing many lenses and corresponding solar cells. The panel, which is much larger than the solar panels you see on your neighbor’s rooftop, sits on a tracker that trains the panel to follow the sun’s movement throughout the day.

CPV developers, like some solar thin-film companies, still have to prove their products work as promised and attract project developers and financiers. CPV technology made a lot of sense several years ago when solar cells were very expensive, but the prices have declined significantly since then.

The struggles of Soliant Energy highlights those challenges. Los Angeles-based Soliant has laid off most of its employees after it couldn’t raise the money to build a 40 MW factory, reported Greentech Media. Unlike other CPV developers, Soliant was working on a CPV system for commercial rooftops. The concept was interesting and caught our attention during Solar Power International last October.

Morgan Solar’s system is ground-mounted, and the company set out to develop slimmer panels. The company slimmed down the panels by doing something different from other CPV technologies, getting rid of the focal distance between the lenses and the cells. The optics may look like Fresnel lenses but they aren’t, Morgan said. Thinner design requires less material, weighs less and presumably costs less to install.

The 3-square-meter panel can concentrate the sun up to 1,000 times and can convert 25 percent of the sunlight into electricity, Morgan said. Other CPV companies, such as SolFocus and Amonix, have developed much larger solar panels, which the companies say lead to more efficient use of land and trackers.

Morgan Solar currently has a panel assembly line at its headquarters in Toronto. The California factory, in the city of Chula Vista, will be critical for the company to move into commercial production. Morgan Solar previously talked about setting up a manufacturing operation with 35MW of capacity in 2011. The plan is to start with 5.5MW and move to 50MW after, Morgan said. A 50MW factory would cost about $13 million to build.

Morgan Solar is planning a 200 KW demonstration system in Lancaster, Calif., this year. The system will power a water pump that irrigates the nearby soccer field and be available for show-and-tell tours, Morgan said. Ground breaking is set to take place in the next few months. The company hopes to raise money to finance 16 MW of projects as well, Morgan said.

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Morgan Solar at Solar Power International 2010

Morgan Solar has settled on a production plan and is ready to offer its first system that uses concentrated sunlight and solar cells to produce electricity. Now the Canadian startup is counting on its new CEO, Asif Ansari, to deliver another round of funding that will “definitely be more than $10 million,” to deliver those plans.

Hiring Ansari is a big coup for the Toronto startup — Ansari was CEO and then CTO of eSolar until last year, when he founded Suntrough Energy in Southern California. Before eSolar, Ansari headed research, development and manufacturing of concentrated photovoltaic technology at Energy Innovations.

John Paul Morgan, co-founder and chief technology officer for Morgan Solar, told us that before Ansari joined the company he was intrigued with it because he didn’t believe the Canadian startup’s technology could work. “He did the interview out of sheer curiosity of how it could work. We won him over,” Morgan said.

Less than four months ago, Ansari told us that his next big thing was to bring solar thermal energy to the developing world. At that time, though, he also had quietly started working at Morgan Solar, which was looking for a new chief executive to shepherd its leap into commercial production. Morgan Solar “officially” announced the arrival of the new CEO last week during Solar Power International in Los Angeles, though the company confirmed the hire to Green Energy Reporter last month.

Ansari is still listed as CEO of Suntrough on the company’s website. John Paul Morgan said Suntrough and Morgan Solar are tackling different markets, and Morgan Solar has no problem with Ansari’s continuing involvement in Suntrough.

Morgan Solar has developed a concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system that uses lenses made with acrylic and glass to concentrate the sunlight up to 1,000 times onto slivers of solar cells. The company’s 27-meter by 27-meter 3-square-meter solar panel will feature rows of optics and accompanying cells, and will be 26-30 percent efficient. Designed as part of ground-mounted systems, the solar panels will sit on dual-axis trackers to follow the sun.

The company, founded in 2007, initially designed its optics to be triangle in shape, but changed the shape to square to reduce the number of components and simplify the process of assembling them, said Morgan, who was inspired to get into the solar business while working for Doctors Without Borders in Congo.

The startup has picked Chula Vista, Calif., as the location for its factory to produce optics for its concentrating PV system starting in spring 2011. The startup is getting a $3.3 million loan from the California Energy Commission and manufacturing supplies from its investor Nypro, which makes factory equipment for all sorts of plastic products.

The solar company hasn’t decided whether to assemble the optics and other components into solar panels at the Chula Vista site as well, Morgan said. The company has a panel assembly facility at its headquarters. The overall plan is to run a manufacturing operation that can produce up to 35 megawatts of solar panels per year in 2011, he said.

The company also plans to carry out a megawatt-size demonstration project next year, Morgan said. Aside from Nypro, the startup also counts power plant developer Iberdrola as a corporate investor who could help the company commercialize its technology in ways other than providing private equity.

Morgan Solar is competing in a field with no shortage of players. Competitors include SolFocus and Amonix, both of whom have installed equipment and found buyers for the electricity from their solar gear.

The latest round reflects CEO Dan Shugar’s ability to convince investors to bet on Solaria’s low-concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) technology, which uses optics to boost the sunlight’s concentration two times and direct it onto monocrystalline silicon cells. Shugar was previously the president of PowerLight, a project developer that was bought by SunPower, where he then served as the president of its project development business before joining Solaria.

The money, from investors including Adams Street Partners, Cycad Group, and Western Technologies, is an addition to the $45 million that Solaria raised back in May and includes a $10 million loan. In Solaria’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported it had aimed to raise $73.39 million in equity but sold $45.1 million at the time. In another SEC filing, in December 2009, Solaria reported that it was hoping to raise about $12 million in debt and options and had taken in $7 million then. The company actually talked about raising the D round back in November 2008 and was then gunning for $100 million. At the time, the company had raised $77 million overall.

“In 2009, the company was focused predominantly on product development,” Shugar told me in May. “They need to ramp up the operations and sales, and that’s where I come in.” Shugar also is well connected politically – Solaria hosted Jerry Brown for the kickoff of his campaign for California governor in June.

Solaria is still in the early stages of proving it can compete in an increasingly crowded field. The company was founded in 1999 but started developing CPV technology in 2003. It’s rolling out its solar panels with a second generation technology, which uses only glass as the optics and the protective layer. An earlier technology put an acrylic layer below the glass protective layer for concentrating the sunlight.

Ditching the acrylic is a money saver – Solaria can achieve manufacturing costs that are 40 percent less than the costs for conventional, non-concentrating solar panels, Shugar said, who declined to disclose his company’s manufacturing costs. The company is selling 210- to 230-watt solar panels with can get 13.5-14 percent efficiency, he said.

Solaria has a factory at its headquarters that can produce 8 megawatts of solar panels per year, Rob Koch, managing director of NGEN Partners, another Solaria investor, told me in May. Solaria also has contracted with an undisclosed Asian manufacturer for 40 megawatts of annual capacity.

Back in April, Solaria said it had begun shipping product to undisclosed customers. In August, it announced a 5-year deal to sell its solar panels to enXco, which is owned by EDF Energies Nouvelles and invested in the D round as well. Solaria didn’t divulge details of the sales agreement except that it involves “a firm order and significant options.”

Solaria is one of a long list of low and high-concentrating photovoltaic technology startups that have collectively received hundreds of millions of venture capital to deliver low-cost solar panels or a system of solar panels and trackers, which tilt the panels to face and follow the sun throughout the day.

The idea of concentrating sunlight seemed particularly appealing when silicon, the main ingredient in the majority of solar panels sold on the market, fetched hundreds of dollars per kilogram several years ago. However, the price has fallen to less than $100 per kilogram this year while makers of the conventional solar panels have also cut costs by expanding their factories quickly, prompting skeptics to question whether CPV developers could compete.

CPV advocates say their technologies use much smaller pieces of silicon or semiconductors to generate the same amount of electricity, and trackers help to boost power production. But using trackers also adds costs. Many of them are still in the technology development phases, though some of them, such as Skyline Solar, SolFocus and Concentrix Solar have rolled out products and saw them installed in the field. Amonix, which like SolFocus and Concentrix is making giant solar panels that can concentrate sunlight hundreds of times, is set to supply the equipment for a 30-megawatt solar farm in Colorado.

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