Background

Setting the goal - 1 USD / W peak

The Solar20 project actually first emerged on a birthday celebration of Joakim Nordlander. After the cake and a vivid discussion about solar energy, we did some calculations showing that a concentrating solar cell with mirrors concentrating the light, could produce electrical energy to a competitive price.

We identified a number of markets were solar insulation is high and the re are good investment conditions for solar energy.

We chose to set the goal of a production cost of 1 USD / W peak. A plant that can produce 1 million Watt at full sunlight is then allowed to cost 1 million US dollar.

Our calculations showed that is was only an engineering problem to solve. That was the start of Solar20.

Energy crisis - political or technical solution?

Many of the participants in Solar20 have involved in environmental work in one way of the other. Quite a few of the Solar20 team have worked political to change policies. Some in UN-forums as Commission on Sustainable Development, the Swedish government or in NGO:s.

However, the Kyoto protocol (now soon in effect) to reduce greenhouse gases will allow hundreds of millions of lives being threatened by climate change - drought, flooding, disease and catastrophic weather. Depending on fossil fuels like creosote for light and wood for cooking is also causing a lot of human and environmental problems.

Solar20 constrains

When calculating costs, we compared to the small portable sawmill in aluminium produced by the company Logosol ( www.logosol.info )

After reading piles of documents in solar research and talking to research groups world wide, we set basic elements we wanted to explore to achieve low cost. These are the constrains of the project:

Technology

a) parabolic or other shape to concentrate sunlight in a long (>15 m) wide (>2 m) trough with mirrors
b) solar modules with 20% efficiency at 20 suns concentration

Power plant

c) a plant should consist of at least 10.000 square meters mirror area
d) site located in desert area with plenty of sun

Production

e) production plant set up at site, local workforce do assembly
f) parts manufactured in low-cost countries an large volumes