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Soitec SA

Dry Heat

Soitec’s CPV technology opens new markets for solar energy.

JOSÉ J. ABAURRE/COURTESY SOITEC

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Ironically, the sunniest places aren’t always the best candidates for solar energy. That’s because concentrated solar thermal power plants require large amounts of water to cool their systems, and traditional photovoltaic, or PV, cells show significant drops in efficiency in very hot environments, says Hansjörg Lerchenmüller, senior vice president of Soitec SA’s (NYSE Euronext: SOI) Solar Customer Group. The company’s Concentrix concentrated photovoltaic, or CPV, technology breaks that tradition by using solar cells that don’t lose efficiency at high ambient temperatures and systems that do not need water for cooling, he explains.

37 percent: The sunlight-to-energy electricity conversion yield that Soitec aims to reach by 2015.

Soitec, based in Grenoble, France, is one of the world’s largest suppliers of silicon-on-insulator, or SOI, wafers used in the semi-conductor industry. Its CPV systems use Fresnel lenses (like the ones in lighthouses) to magnify sunlight 500 times and focus it onto small, “multijunction” solar cells. Each junction is tuned to a different light wavelength, accessing a broader spectrum of the sun’s rays than do standard cells, which are optimized for only one wavelength, Lerchenmüller explains. As a result, Soitec’s CPV systems boast sunlight-to-electricity conversion yields of 26 percent compared with around 13 percent for PV technology, he says. When placed on trackers that follow the sun, those systems can generate a constant flow of energy in daylight hours.

In October 2010, Soitec gave Johnson Controls Inc. (NYSE: JCI) the rights to use Concentrix technology in an array of solar power plants the company plans to build worldwide. Earlier this year, Soitec entered into a purchase agreement with San Diego Gas & Electric to build five CPV power plants in Southern California, using the Concentrix technology to generate 155 megawatts of clean, renewable energy — enough to power 60,000 homes. Soitec is also working with European research labs Fraunhofer ISE and CEA-Leti to develop solar cells capable of an even higher energy yield. Says Soitec Chairman and CEO André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé: “Close relationships with institutions like these keep our company on the cutting edge.”