Cogenra.com
Check those guys out. Unlike so many they seem to be pounding through the evolution stages from R&D to delivery and finance.
As you will eventually see, I'm not entirely crazy about driven cooling of the PV cells (but whatcha gonna do?) But if you set that aside they have a straightforward design and they have somethings lots of others seem to miss.
1) A target customer and they are driving directly at those customers: Commercial Accounts (get serious decision makers and big ticket orders)
2) Furthermore, Commercial Accounts that need lots of hot water for sanitation: Dairies, wineries, food processing plants.
3) Commercial accounts where land (aka Solar Aperture) is cheap.
BULLSEYE! There are plenty of those customers out there.
and...
4) A major part of their plan (it seems) is to enter in Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) to take the financing problem out of the customer's to do list (and make money on the finance.)
These guys are putting systems in the ground for paying customers. Bravo.
Take a close look at the various beauty shots of the collectors and tell me what you think. I see some expensive hand assembled gear (note the plumbing fittings for the PV's cooling jacket) built to take serious wind loads. I also see light missing some of the PV (could be the photographer did not notice that they were unevenly illuminated.)
They have a video of the product intro at a winery complete with big time VIPs. The video does a good quick layout of the product/value on offer.
Best line is at 4:50 from Vinod Khosla (a very well respected Venture Capitalist.) "Nice that this is a technology that does not need a billion dollars in DOE loan guarantees to get started."
Really, go watch that video. That is the one with the most to chew on but there is plenty on that site to get excited about. They have great press people too.
Full disclosure, they installed a system at Clover Dairy and I drink their milk - yummy cappuccinos, now with less greenhouse gas!
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