California CPUC Invests $1.5 Million in Khosla Start-Up Cogenra Solar

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Cogenra Solar has just been awarded a $1.5 million research grant from the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) and CSI’s R&D incubator to finance a full scale 272 kW demonstration prototype of its solar hybrid co-generation of heat and electricity at the Sonoma Wine Company near Santa Rosa.

In addition, the CPUC  funds will enable Cogenra Solar to modify its units for potential integration with PG&E’s smart grid to provide distributed energy storage for use during peak demand.

The new hybrid solar-solar water heater start-up is backed by Vinod Khosla, and like his other solar hybrid start-up PVT Echo,  it addresses the same problem of reducing solar costs by producing both electricity and heat from one unit.

Its unique technology is intended for a mid-sized commercial market, neither for homeowners’ rooftops, nor for utility-scale solar production, but for commercial users like food processors, hotels, restaurants, laundromats and similar businesses. The arrays are taller than a person, but not than a building, and they rotate on their trackers to follow the sun.

Each unit focuses sunlight reflected up into a small but efficient solar array that faces down into the mirror.

A long narrow array of solar photovoltaic cells face downwards towards the reflected and highly focused sunshine bounced up by the mirrors. Above the solar array is the tube that carries the liquid being heated by the same intense focused sunlight. It removes the heat for use in solar hot water.

As with PVT’s Echo, the hybrid solar co-generation technology also solves a problem with solar PV: that it is somewhat less efficient when it is too hot. Solar electricity can be more efficient in Minnesota on a snowy day than in Arizona during a heat wave, because solar panels produce more power when they are not overheated.

The liquid is constantly removing the heat built up behind the solar panels, siphoning off heat so that the panels produce at their optimum. Nevertheless, the heat production versus the solar electricity production is about four to one: making these ideal for businesses like large industrial food processors, hotels, laundromats and restaurants: that need to make four times more hot water or heat than electricity.

These panels are intended for ground-mounting, making a vineyard a great place to showcase the units. The units are about 7 feet high, and will use some of their electricity to power their trackers. The glass mirrors are economical to produce, as instead of being one big curved mirror, these are made in units, about 8″ wide. This means they can simply be slotted in and easily replaced if broken.

Cogenra Solar was one eight other grant recipients awarded by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to support the development of improved photovoltaic production technologies and innovative business models.

The company plans to provide the industry’s first Heat & Power Purchase Agreement (HPPA) which, like the solar PPAs or leases offered by solar innovators Sungevity, SunRun and Solar City, have sky-rocketed solar adoption because they enable the provision of clean renewable power at below utility rates.

The CPUC hopes that the system could also provide tri-generation, making electricity, hot water, and cooling as well, greatly reducing California’s energy demand.

Importantly, they believe that these systems, if widely adopted by industrial and commercial customers, would be able to coordinate with the PG&E  smart grid and provide the state a significant quantity of distributed solar energy storage during the afternoons, to release that during California’s evenings, reducing California’s use of fossil energy.

I will visit them when they show this in Sonoma next month to get some more detail. Khosla’s PVT Solar seems a bit stalled over the last few years, and seems to have been bypassed by SunDrum Solar, which at least has a few actual customers for its similar heat-siphoning solar co-generation hybrid. So it will be interesting to see another very innovative approach to this useful and much needed work.

Related stories:

Why Finnish Paper Mills Became Electric Utilities
53 MW Ice Energy Distributed Energy Storage Begins in Glendale, California

Why California Has Nearly Quadrupled Solar Installations Since Last Year

SusanKraemer@Twitter


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