Concentrating Photovoltaics

Concentrating photovoltaics, or CPV, generates electricity from sunlight by using lenses or curved mirrors to focus light onto small, highly efficient multi junction solar cells, rather than spreading sunlight over a large flat panel, and systems typically add solar trackers and cooling equipment to keep performance high. The highest concentration CPV systems achieve close to 40 percent efficiency for production modules and about 30 percent for complete systems, the highest of any photovoltaic technology in use, and laboratory cells have reached 47.6 percent; the technology differs fundamentally from concentrated solar power, since CPV generates electricity directly through the photovoltaic effect rather than using solar heat to drive a turbine. As of 2016 cumulative CPV installations totaled about 350 megawatts worldwide, under 0.2 percent of global installed solar capacity, and annual installations, which peaked in 2012, had fallen to near zero by 2018 as the cost of conventional crystalline silicon panels fell faster than CPV could compete with.