A mysterious video and tracking tribulations.

Google search revealed an unlisted YouTube video of the GV1’ (prime) Concentrating PhotoVoltaic (CPV) site on the channel named GreenVoltsInc with the description:

Here you can see the entire site that will provide 2.6 MW on Kelso Road, the 320 kW installed and operating, and the PG&E sub station.

The original unlisted link is dead but has reappeared here and is embedded below for as long as it lasts.

I believe the video was recorded using an R/C (Remote Control) helicopter that flew almost Icarus close to transmission lines from the PG&E Corporation (NYSE:PCG) Kelso Substation. I captured some screen shots just in case the video disappears again.

Two weeks earlier, the southern eight (8) arrays of the fifth GV1’ tracker were still under construction, and an errant tracking array was evident as shown in the photo below. To be honest, I was not convinced about the overall GV1’ tracking relative to the sun’s position that afternoon.

From GreenVolts GV1: Rising Sun – Part 3

If the GV2-250 250 W Concentrator Photovoltaic Panels (instead of modules) are used, sixteen (16) arrays with 16 (sixteen) modules replicated across five (5) trackers does pencil out to the 320 kW (kiloWatt) capacity. For a 2.6 MW (MegaWatt) project, less than the 3 MW stated on the GreenVolts, Inc. website, forty-one (41) trackers will be required, rounding up, to complete the GV1’ project.

Was GreenVolts Inc. awarded a $252560 Treasury Grant on April 4, 2011, for completing a project phase of GV1’? I am still investigating this.

One onlooker in a nearby field seemed unimpressed with all the GV1’ developments since GreenVolts GV1: Demolition Man.

From GreenVolts GV1: Rising Sun – Part 3

GreenVolts Test Site
An informative comment on “GreenVolts, CPV Aspirant, Gets $39M in VC” by Eric Wesoff for Greentech Media lead me straight to the GreenVolts test site. I spent time one fruitless afternoon searching for the site last year on the west side of Interstate 880 after seeing the New GreenVolts Design photo in “More CPV Action: Greenvolts Scores $7.5M in VC”.

View GreenVolts Test Site in a larger map

I visited the site first in the afternoon and then in the morning. As suggested, the morning provided my best view to date of the front side of the GreenVolts modules along with a surprise. Less than two days after the first visit, half of the arrays on the second tracker were out of commission as shown in the photo.

From GreenVolts Test Site

Per Mr. Wesoff’s post:

Brian Hinman of Oak Investment Partners said in an email that “GreenVolts is installing a lot of hardware now, and it works exactly as designed.  We have 18 months of operating history on the new architecture.”

The two cases highlighted above do not affirm Mr. Hinman’s statement.

From GreenVolts Test Site

The undifferentiated modules appear to consist of twenty-four (24) Fresnel lenses each paired with a III-V multijunction terrestrial solar cell. A PC (Personal Computer) processor style heat sink is mated with each solar cell on the back of the module. Further details are unavailable and nary a single patent application has ever been published by GreenVolts.

Arizona Western College maintains Solar Array and Solar Web Cam webpages for the five 1 MegaWatt projects being constructed on their campus including GreenVolts. Viewing the Gym Webcam appears to show activity at the 1 MW SolFocus CPV installation.

I’ve always avoided and ignored using a possessive apostrophe with GreenVolts. Does that make me a bad grammar person?