Sunrgi Makes Cheapest Solar Promise Ever: 5 Cents per Kilowatt-Hour in 1 Year

Hollywood-based start-up Sunrgi claims its solar will be as cheap as coal -- and soon.

The cost: 5 cents wholesale per kilowatt-hour.

When: 12 to 15 months for commercial production.

Craig Goodman, president of the National Energy Marketers Associations, says it would be a godsend to the world:

Solar power at 5 cents per kWh would be a world-changing breakthrough. It would make solar generation of electricity as affordable as generation from coal, natural gas or other non-renewable sources, without requiring any subsidy.

That’s the lowest price ever promised by a solar company. Says VentureBeat:

That [price] is low enough to undercut damn near everything.

Wow, Sunrgi sure has cajones. But do they have the right technology?

Have a look...

Sunrgi uses concentrated solar photovoltaic technology -- but to the extreme, literally -- and has named its concentrators, fittingly, "Xtreme."

Like all concentrating photovoltaic technology, Sunrgi uses lenses to focus sunlight onto small strips of photovoltaic solar cells. But the Sunrgi method delivers more watts for the money. A lot more.

Here's how:

Sunrgi concentrates sunlight so that it's up to 2,000 times brighter than the sun. (Typical systems aim for around 500 to 800 times sun concentration.)

That intense spot of concentrated light is then focused onto super tiny photovoltaic cells -- made from some of the most efficient materials on the planet over at Spectrolab -- that can convert 37.5% of the sun’s energy into electricity.

For the unversed, that's an ambitious claim. The world record for solar efficiency is 31.25% using photovoltaics. It was set in February 2008 "with the sky almost 10 percent brighter than usual."

With such concentrations of sunlight, Sunrgi’s cells can be smaller than those of its competitors, as well.

In fact, it claims to use four times less photovoltaic material than other approaches, which helps to explain, in part, its lower costs.

The Sunrgi model requires less space, too. In the company's words: "more power less land." And, like the booming First Solar, Sunrgi's technology is not dependent on shortage-prone silicon.

Another boon for cost.

Convincing, eh? Still, not all analysts have swallowed the Sunrgi Kool-Aid -- at least not yet.

As Greentech Media notes, concentrating solar photovoltaics is a niche technology at best, expected to make up just two percent of the total solar market by 2020.

And then there's the issue of overheating.

Concentrating extreme light would heat the solar cells to 3,000 degrees. And then melt them -- instantly.

Sunrgi says it has created a "proprietary" cooling system -- on which its whole technology depends, by the way -- that would keep the cells at around 86 to 104 degrees.

But it remains uncomfortably hush-hush on the details.

Sunrgi's breakthrough claim of 5 cents per kilowatt-hour came out of nowhere last month. It shocked the whole solar world, triggering skepticism and optimism alike from peers.

If its cells can take the heat in the end, who knows, Sunrgi might just change the face of the whole energy economy.

And if not, well, there are plenty of solar companies waiting to steal the "cheap as coal" thunder.

Remember: at this point in the game, it's all about "when" not "if."

Stay tuned...

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