Sunrgi – Concentrated Solar Power that makes sense!
At one point in our lives, we may have experimented with a magnifying glass and concentrated the sun’s light to start a fire or even more evil, light a ant on fire. With lenses or mirrors the suns light can be concentrated into a very powerful force. Humans have concentrated the sun for a very long time, the first documented case in the 12th century, Archimedes burned up the whole Roman fleet by tilting a mirror toward the sun, concentrating the sun’s light. It seems like the guys at Sunrgi have studied Archimedes. Sunrgi is a US based solar power company that has designed a solar panel which uses the power of concentrating the sun to produce electricity.
This product looks very futuristic and is practical too. We have talked about concentrated photovoltaics in the past and understand there could be a heat issue when concentrating light onto a solar cell, although if you notice on Sunrgi’s unit they have a massive heat sink built right into the concentrator, the neat aspect of this concentrated solar panel is that it has a cooling system built in! The company calls their new solar panel line, Xtreme Concentrated Photovoltaics (XCPV), which magnifies sunlight high efficency solar cells.
The company claims that its technology will allow people to produce large ammounts of power at $0.05 (USD) per kWh. Traditional solar photovoltaic panels produce electricity anywhere from $0.13-$0.15 per kWh. This is a very amazing claim the company makes because at $0.05 per kWh this competes with most electric bills, even where people are getting bargain rates from their utility companies. Not only will concentrated compete with traditional electric rate head on, but it will greatly reduce the surface area a customer needs to eliminate their entire electric bill! The Sunrgi Concentrated Solar Panels will be out on the market 12-15 months for now, we can’t wait to get our hands on a couple to test drive them!
