A new study prepared and published by UC Berkeley’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory and accredited by the CPV Consortium, a world-wide located non-profit institution that endorses the growth and development of the CPV industry, indicates that the CPV solar systems have notable ecological advantages such as less land requirement, materials and water than other technologies including other type of solar technologies.
The report makes an in depth study on all the details from the time of installation to the withdrawal of the system from usage.
The report delves in detail on the important life cycle assessment (LCA) factors such as cradle-to-cradle footprint, embedded greenhouse gases, energy payback and claims that the CPV systems leads the industry segment established on the available data. The report indicates that the CPV technology upholds its viable advantages such as less water and land usage as of today and as well as in future. When equated with other solar thermal power generating modules CPV utilizes minimum quantity of power, thus making the technology ideal for use in dry desert locations where higher level solar resources are available. The report expects that the improvements in the CPV system technology may further cut down its land footprint bringing more benefits.
The report also includes details in the deployment of CPV by utilizing the developed SWITCH model of UC Berkeley to identify the carbon discharge advantages of the CPV projects in power generation systems. The model establishes the use of CPV as a power production technology for a particular region.