Solar Energy in Spain .. See How The Spanish Became Leaders .. 6

Solar Energy in Spain

Traditionally, Spanish companies have exported about 80 percent of the cells produced, but with renewed interest within Spain in PV, those numbers are changing. Within only the last two years, nearly 100 MW of PV power have been built in the country. Isofotón expects to sell about 60 percent of its panels within Spain, though the company still exports to Europe, North and South America, and Asia.

Isofotón’s research director says what distinguishes the company is the high quality of the cells. “You can find information in books about how to make solar cells,” says Jesús Alonso, director of Research and Development. “The main difficulty is the know-how – it’s how to make sure that those 400 wafers you put in the furnace are actually good, quality solar cells. That’s the key.”

As with all solar cell producers, Isofotón has been limited lately by the dearth of highly purified silicon necessary both for microelectronics and the solar industry. In response they have begun setting up silicon refining operations in Cadiz, which should begin production in 2008.

Working with Antonio Luque’s IES, Isofotón has focused research on developing concentrating PV solar cells. Downstairs in the factory, in a small room on the main factory floor, a machine whirrs as thin sheets of tiny dots of solar cells, only 1 mm large, pass through a machine. They will be attached to gold wires and then serve as the focus of the concentrating lenses.

Outside the building, a panel of concentrating PV cells is mounted on a tracker. Unlike standard PV, which can accept all ambient light, concentrated PV cells are most efficient when tracking the sun to appropriately focus the light through the lenses and onto the dots. As such, concentrating solar will likely be most effective on a large scale, like solar thermal, where fields of trackers can be set up to take advantage of the sun’s angled rays.

The material used in these concentrators is gallium arsenide, 50 times more expensive than silicon. But the cells are concentrated 1000 times, demanding 1000 times less material. 

When it comes to traditional PV panels, most companies focus on marketing to the developed world – where money is available for PV and the process is as simple as creating the product and selling it. But Isofotón has taken the lead in marketing solar power to the developing world, called “rural electrification.” This year they expect it to be nearly a quarter of their market. Even the marketing works differently for this segment of the business, as projects must be researched and appropriate financial models developed for each. Isofotón has rural electrification projects around South America, Morocco, Algeria, Indonesia, and South Africa.

Solar power in these poor, rural regions is not simply used for home electricity, but also for applications such as water pumps and desalination. To maintain a lead in this area, in addition to the decades of experience the company has already built up, Isofotón is focusing research on how best to couple solar power with those types of applications, as much of the existing equipment isn’t appropriately built to work with an intermittent energy source.

“If we look to the really long-term, I think that our main market will be rural electrification, because at the end these are the people who don’t have electricity. Most of the energy increase in the world will be in electricity, and most of that will be in developing countries,” says Alonso.

Acciona Solar, the solar energy arm of Acciona Energía, as with the other major companies involved in this field, has seen phenomenal growth rates. The company’s income exploded from about a half million Euros to more than 96 million Euros in only eight years.