High Concentration PV

Our Approach

XE is changing the way solar power plants are designed, built-out, and sustained, to make it feasible for solar energy to meet a significant fraction of our total energy needs. Our approach, called XE-CPV, involves improving both the technology of the solar panels themselves as well the strategy by which solar power plants are financed, developed, and sustained far beyond the traditionally assumed lifetime of a solar power plant.

On the technology front, we think of an ideal ultra-high efficiency solar panel as needing to perform a number of basic functions including solar tracking, solar concentration, energy conversion, energy storage, and power management. XE is working on improving each of these functions by developing unusually low-loss solar concentrators, integrated electronic solar trackers (eTrackers), ultra-high efficiency nonstructural solar cells, and on-panel energy storage. Each of these technologies is addressed in detail under concentrators, trackers, and storage.

On the plant development front, we are focusing on building 1GWa (one gigawatt average) baseload (not peaking) solar power plants using a technique that allows the Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI) ratio to reach 10:1 within about 10 years and then to asymptotically approach as much as 100:1 over a period of several decades. This is unlike the methods employed today that quickly saturate at lower EROEI ratio values. In short our new power plant operations technique make solar both a renewable and a sustainable source of power by more effective use of time and land. The technical and financial details of our power plant approach are available for review by qualified investors and government project managers, for more information click here.

The combination of new methods for power plant operations and an underlying area efficient solar technology truly changes the game for solar energy by showing a path to very large capacity solar power plants, on the smallest feasible footprint of land area, that can provide baseload power for decades to come. If successful, XE-CPV will alleviate energy security concerns, create many high-value clean technology jobs, and mitigate the effects of fossil fuel depletion and global warming.