Chevron announced the other day that it will use Germany-based Concentrix Solar’s concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) technology to build a 1 megawatt solar facility on the site of a mine in Questa, New Mexico.
Now Concentrix has put out its own release that repeats most of the key facts but makes on additional key point: its CPV technology is ready for worldwide deployment and utility-scale projects.The New Mexico project is meant as a bit of a coming out party for the Concentrix’s FLATCON technology, which uses lenses to focus sunlight onto solar cells.
The technology is a hybrid, somewhere between concentrated solar power – which uses mirrors to focus sunlight on a liquid, which then boils and drives turbines – and straightforward photovoltaic technology.
The project, the largest planned CPV project in the United States, will be built on 20 acres of a molybdenum mine owned by Chevron Mining Inc.
The power will be sold through a power purchase agreement to the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative.
Concentrix, which was acquired by Soitec in December, has designs on the global market.
Soitec CEO André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé told GER earlier this month that the company was looking at expanding across the global sunbelt in Europe, North America and Asia.
Concentrix CEO Hansjorg Lerchnemuller echoed that sentiment, saying:
We are excited to prove our technology with Chevron on the Questa site and are planning new investment to further expand our business in the Southwest of the USA in the near future.