Solar Markets

The MicroPower Chip produces electricity from any heat source, of which solar energy is one possibility. The market is somewhat speculative at this point, but two opportunities exist: Concentrated Solar Power Plants (CSP) and a replacement or augmentation for photovoltaics (PV).

Concentrated Solar Power Plants (Power Mode)

The essential Concentrated Solar Plant (CSP) concept is to expose a simple black absorber to sunlight to collect thermal energy from a mirror concentrator and deliver it to the hot side of the MicroPower Chip.

The CSP Global Market Initiative is targeting 5,000 megawatt capacity for the industry by 2015. Currently, Stirling engines are used as turbines to convert the collected heat into electricity, and achieve efficiencies of approximately 30%. Though it is not anticipated that using MicroPower Chips for this purpose will deliver higher efficiency, there are a number of other benefits, such as significantly reduced acquisition and maintenance costs, which make the chips a viable alternative.

Solar Photovoltaics (Power Mode)

Photovoltaics is what most people have in mind when they are thinking of standard solar power - it is the field of technology and research related to the application of solar cells for generating power by converting sunlight directly into electricity.

For such solar energy operation, MicroPower Chip converters are more than twice as efficient as solar photovoltaics, so at least twice as much electricity is generated from the same area, and the overall cost is three to four times less per watt. Replacing or augmenting photovoltaics (PV) with MicroPower's augmented thermoelectric - based technology is possible, but speculative at this point.