Boeing-Spectrolab
PYRON SOLAR GENERATOR
EARTH-FRIENDLY 21st CENTURY ELECTRICITY
Space-Developed Concentrating Photovoltaic . . .
the most elegant form of renewable electricity.
-
click here for a short video of the Pyron Generator in operation. (note close-up of 1-watt motor which drives the tracking system).
-
click here to see a 5-second time-lapse video of the tracking system in operation (total time: 3 hours)
PYRON SOLAR INC., an R&D company in La Jolla, California, developed in cooperation with Boeing-Spectrolab a novel system to convert sunlight into electricity.
This revolutionary design is a low-profile floating system with short-focal-length lenses concentrating direct sunlight by 400X onto photovoltaic cells. These advanced multi-junction cells produce 800 times more electricity than conventional non-concentrating cells the same size.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy confirmed 37.3% efficiency.
With these modified space-age cells, PYRON developed a truly 21st-century, Earth-friendly generator, an innovative system with numerous positive implications for the sustainability of global-scale power and a solar-hydrogen economy.
The first PYRON-SOLAR solar power plant with BOEING-SPECTROLAB photovoltaic cells has been built in El Cajon CA, near San Diego. The platform, 23 feet in diameter and just 12 inches high, generates 6.6 kW peak. The picture shows that except for the cutout areas along the perimeter, the whole surface of the platform collects sunlight. In full-sized power plants, such cutout areas amount to less than 2% of the circle.
-
BOEING-Spectrolab holds the world record in efficiency of solar cells.
-
PYRON-SOLAR, INC. holds the world record in lens-surface per unit ground-surface.
-
The world record in the lowest solar-electricity production costs can be achieved by combining these innovations.
Yield: At 2,850 kWh/m2yr direct-sunlight as in sunny deserts, the annual electricity yield will be 450 kWh/m2year or 450 GWh per km2year.
Performance-comparison: Per unit of total land area Pyron power plants produce:
-
14.5 times more electricity than the world’s largest plant SOLAR II in Dagget, CA.
-
8.6 times more electricity than the huge LUZ power plants in California.
-
189 times more electricity than the Manzanares (Spain) Solar Chimney power plant.
System Price: The extremely high efficiency and the low material requirements make the new system competitive with conventional power plants. For large Pyron power plants a calculation shows that the price for the high-tech parts including the cell and the material for the low-tech parts will be $2.40 per watt. Depending on where the units are constructed, the labor costs will vary. With manufacture in the U.S. the total cost is estimated to be around $3-4 per watt.
