I came to this article about the Sunflower’s Fresnel lens . Those lens concentrates sunlight more than 1,000 times, enabling cheaper electricity than traditional photovoltaics. The system is self-powered.

Technical specifications:

• 200-watt system
• features trackers that shift with the sun’s location, as well as a controller and communications system.
• The low-slung Sunflower is built to withstand winds, and it doesn’t need to penetrate a rooftop for installation.

The Sunflower produces more energy over the course of the day than a traditional PV system of equal capacity. This extra energy is particularly helpful in making a system more cost-effective, as the cost of utility-supplied electricity the system is displacing during afternoon “peak” periods is often substantially more expensive than at other times of the day.

The entire system can rotate on 2 axis to be as efficient as possible.

Source: Ecogeek and Reuters

Technorati : concentrate photovoltaics, fresnel lens, solar cells
Del.icio.us : concentrate photovoltaics, fresnel lens, solar cells
Zooomr : concentrate photovoltaics, fresnel lens, solar cells
Flickr : concentrate photovoltaics, fresnel lens, solar cells

You Should Also Check Out This Post:

• Acciona's solar plant in Portugal
• New solar facility in Iran with parabolic mirrors
• Happy new Year 2009
• Top ten of Green Technology Blogs
• New solar charger from Energizer

More Active Posts:

• Guy Negre's Air Car coming to America by 2009-2010 (7)
• Solar panel - water heating for the masses (5)
• Electric car under 2500$ !! (4)
• Solar charger for your iPhone 3G (4)
• French Compressed Air Car soon in production ? (3)
• Screen-printed Solar Cells In Many different colors and designs. (3)
• Air conditioning powered by solar energy (3)
• CIGS which are 17.7 percent effficient (3)
• Cheep hydrogen fuel cells on their way to the productions.... (3)
• Revolutionary technology of Concentrated solar panels (3)