News

22 January 2009

 

ArimaEco to ship CPV modules to Spain’s ISFOC

After obtaining IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) 62108 certification for its GaAs-based triple-junction high-concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) modules last November, in early February Taiwan’s Arima EcoEnergy Technologies Corp (ArimaEco) will begin shipping 300kW of modules to the 3MW CPV project of the Instituto de Sistemas Fotovoltaicos de Concentración S. A. (ISFOC) based in Puertollano, Spain, according to a report by Digitimes.

ArimaEco will be responsible for installing the modules into a power-generating system, with installation to be completed in April. The contract will bring in revenues of about NT$100m (US$3.03m), says the firm’s chairman Stephen Lee.

The 3MW ISFOC project was initiated in 2006 by the Castilla-La Mancha regional government’s Department of Education and Science and the Institute of Solar Energy (IES) of Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM), and is financed by Spain’s Ministry of Education and Science. The pilot CPV plants have been created both as municipal power production facilities (to generate electricity for the local power grid) and as a proving ground for CPV technology (incorporating different concentrator technologies from several firms). The project aims to demonstrate that CPV technology, with higher efficiency and the potential for cost reduction, is an attractive alternative to other solar technologies in key high-solar-resource regions worldwide.

The first, 1.7MW phase of the ISFOC project in 2006 contracted 700kW from Isofotón of Madrid, Spain, 500kW from Fraunhofer ISE spin-off Concentrix Solar GmbH in Freiburg, Germany, and 500kW from SolFocus Inc of Mountain View, CA, USA.

For the second, 1.3MW phase, in November 2007 ISFOC contracted 300kW from III-V cell manufacturer Emcore of Albuquerque, NM, USA, 300kW from Spain’s Concentración Solar La Mancha S.L., 400kW from Sol3g S.L. of Cerdanyola, Spain, and 300kW from Arima Eco (the only Asian awardee).

ArimaEco was founded in March 2007 by Arima Group, Unity Optoeletronics and PV specialist Dr Andrew Tzeng. The firm plans to expand its annual production capacity for GaAs HCPV modules to 30MW and expects to ship 5MW of modules or power-generating systems for estimated revenues of NT$700-800m in 2009. In addition to Spain, ArimaEco is also targeting the Portugal, Greece, Italy and Eastern European markets.

See related item:

SolFocus first to complete ISFOC CPV installation

Search: GaAs Triple-junction CPV ISFOC

Visit: www.digitimes.com/news/a20090121PD219.html

Visit: www.arimaeco.com

Visit: www.isfoc.es