Rooftop Solar, more energy with less cost

A startup called TenKsolar, based in Minneapolis, says it can increase the amount of solar power generated on rooftops by 25 to 50 percent, and also reduce the overall cost of solar power by changing the way solar cells are wired together and adding inexpensive reflectors to gather more light.

The tenKsolar RAIS PV module with its ground-breaking Cell Optimizing technology is the only flat plate PV module capable of efficiently harvesting reflected light. Other solar panels depend on uniformly distributed light to balance the cells in the system. They can only make as much electricity as their least productive cell. This means that shading or adding extra light to a cell creates a problem for conventional panels. However, tenKsolar RAIS modules integrate the light across the entire module surface and turn it into power. Because of proprietary Cell Optimizing internal to the module, spots of shade, soiling, even physical damage to a portion of a module will have minimal impact on the individual module or array output.
In addition to the gains made by added light, a tenKsolar system operating in real-world conditions converts module power to grid electricity at about 92% efficiency, as compared to conventional solar at less than 80%. By decoupling internal cell dependencies to ensure cells are operating at their intrinsic MPPT under all environmental and lighting conditions (versus overall module MPPT), a tenKsolar system increases inverter efficiencies, tolerances to non-uniform soiling, improves system availability and reduces annual degradation. No other architecture including micro-inverters nor external DC optimizers – is competitive with the system level optimization of the RAIS architecture and Cell Optimizing design of the RAIS module.

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