New Kind of 40% Efficient Solar Farm Gets $90 Million DOE Loan Guarantee to Cogentrix

The largest High Concentration Photovoltaic (HCPV) project in the world is being funded by the DOE with a $90 million loan guarantee for the Cogentrix Alamosa Solar Generating Project. The first 20 years of the electricity it will generate has already been bought under a PPA (power purchase agreement) by the Public Service Company of Colorado. More than 80 percent of its components will be sourced from the United States.HCPV is new form of utility-scale solar that has barely been developed, but it has great potential because it has almost twice the efficiency of regular solar PV. Cogentrix HCPV is rated at 40% efficient. By comparison, most coal plants are typically rated at 30% efficiency.The $90 million in funding represents the tail end of almost $40 billion in loan guarantees, loans, or conditional guarantees by the US Department of Energy (DOE) powered by the Obama administration stimulus Recovery Act.One famously went bad, $0.5 billion to Solyndra. But the more than 40 DOE loan guarantees have

Source: http://feeds.importantmedia.org/~r/IM-cleantechnica/~3/QNGSHIaB8j8/

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