Extending Its Reach
Renewablesbiz : April 06 2010
By Bill Opalka
The last time I caught up with Stirling Energy Systems, it was supplying its sister company with materials for its concentrating solar power project [3]in the Arizona desert. Now it’s gone outside its corporate umbrella to join forces with one of the most recognizable names in aerospace.
Stirling and the Boeing Company have formed a partnership to complete the commercialization and deployment of Boeing’s XR700 high-concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) solar power technology. Through a licensing agreement with Boeing, Stirling has acquired the sole rights to develop, manufacture and deploy the HCPV product globally.
Stirling will lead the commercialization and Boeing will provide technical program development and engineering expertise. The sister company, Tessera Solar, will be responsible for development, construction and operation of solar power facilities using the XR700.
“This venture with Boeing represents an ideal opportunity for Stirling to extend our reach into the solar market for future technology deployments with a product that shares many of the SunCatcher’s key differentiating features - scalability, low water use and high efficiency,” said Stirling CEO Steve Cowman.
The Stirling SunCatcher, as I’ve written, combines a mirrored concentrator dish with a high-efficiency Stirling engine to track, collect and convert the sun’s thermal energy to grid-quality electricity.
Boeing began developing the XR700 technology in 2007 with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Program. The development phase is expected to run another two years with commercialization in 2012.
The XR700 technology uses a non-imaging optical system to concentrate sunlight by a factor of 700 onto high-efficiency, triple-junction solar cells. Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab builds the cells, which in 2009 achieved the world record concentrator solar cell efficiency, at 41.6 percent.
Boeing is in the development and construction phase of a 100-kilowatt facility at California State University, Northridge, using the HCPV solar power technology.
Stirling’s parent, NTR plc, said the HCPV product is expected to give Tessera Solar access to more project-development opportunities, especially in the distributed-generation sector.
And as NTR has shown over the past couple years, that’s a development worth watching.