Concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) system maker Soitec of Bernin, France says that renewable-energy power plant developer Focusic New Energy Holding Co Ltd of Zhengzhou, China has secured a loan for 200m Yuan (about $32.7m) from the China Development Bank (CDB) to finance a 20MW CPV project in Hami, a city on the edge of the Gobi desert in China’s Xinjiang province. The project (of which the initial 3MW pilot plant was announced by Focusic and Soitec in 2011) is the first utility-scale project to be granted a CDB loan for CPV technology. This also marks the first large CPV power plant in China to secure financing.
Focusic is building the 20MW power plant in partnership with Soitec, which supplied the full dual-axis CPV systems for the first 3MW and will supply its new generation of high-efficiency modules for the entire project. Focusic has so far ordered 8.5MWp of modules from Soitec out of the 20MWp for which Focusic has secured the financing. The power plant is expected to begin contributing about 3MW to the local power grid by the end of this year and then ramp up its output as the plant is built out with another phase completed in 2014.
“The demo plant with Soitec technology has proven to be perfectly suited for the northwestern part of our country; we now look forward to getting connected to the power grid and beginning to generate electricity,” says Focusic’s managing director Ma Wenxing.
“This represents a very important milestone in our development strategy,” comments Gaetan Borgers, executive VP of Soitec’s Solar Energy Division. “As we continue our work with Focusic, we look forward to developing a pipeline of projects in China.”
Soitec says that, with its power-generating efficiency of more than 30% and low installation and maintenance costs, CPV technology is the most cost-efficient solution for high-volume power generation in regions with high direct normal irradiance (DNI). China contains an estimated 500,000 square miles of territory with high-DNI ratings and has an enormous and growing demand for energy.
