Solar Power World

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Cleveland’s Rockefeller Greenhouse is hosting a demonstration solar project. Cleveland Mayor Frank G. Jackson and Cleveland Public Power officials were joined by representatives from American Municipal Power (AMP) and GreenField Solar to cut the ribbon on the StarGen Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Concentrator last week.

The StarGen solar concentrator is a green technology, which provides an efficient source of energy while decreasing the use of non-renewable fossil fuels, according to rockefellersolar.com.  The system is an alternative energy approach, which uses the sun to produce both electricity and thermal energy for residential, commercial and industrial use.

The StarGen solar concentrator is a CPV system designed and produced by Ohio-based GreenField Solar. A collaboration between AMP and CPP enabled the installation of 20 solar concentrators at the Rockefeller Park greenhouse. The solar concentrator can concentrate sunlight up to 900 times its original intensity on just a few square inches of solar cells. Each system is designed to produce electrical energy as well as thermal energy in the form of hot water, which is being used to heat the greenhouses.

Each of the installed solar concentrators has two halves, composed of multiple parabolic mirrors that focus sunlight onto the solar cells. These unique solar cells (PhotoVolt cells) were invented in Cleveland, by a former NASA Glenn Research Center scientist. The system maximizes energy production throughout the day, due to its clever array of mirrors and its sophisticated dual axis sun-tracking system.

www.rockefellersolar.com