News

23 July 2008

 

EnergyMixx completes acquisition of HelioDynamics

Last month, Frankfurt-listed renewable energy firm EnergyMixx AG of Zug, Switzerland bought the remaining 70% stake in solar power specialist HelioDynamics Ltd of Cambridge, UK from its management and other shareholders in return for shares in EnergyMixx worth £2.27m ($4.42m), to be paid in tranches against an agreed set of milestones. The transaction complements EnergyMixx’s acquisition of a 30% stake from AIM-listed investor Low Carbon Accelerator (LCA) in late May in exchange for EnergyMixx shares worth £2.93m, making a total value of £5.19m.

HelioDynamics has developed concentrating solar energy technology that can be applied to concentrating solar process heat systems, concentrated solar photovoltaic systems, and concentrated solar combined heat and power (CHP) systems. In particular, HelioDynamics has developed gallium arsenide (GaAs) concentrator photovoltaic technology that has the potential to cut the total installed cost of photovoltaics by up to 50% on a cost/kWh basis (against a 2007 base-line) and to provide solar systems without the current dependence on silicon

“HelioDynamics’ integration into the EnergyMixx Group will bring added value to its substantial portfolio of solar concessions in Italy, as well as additional revenues to the group through the pipeline of orders and leads generated by HelioDynamics,” says HelioDynamics’ CEO Graham Ford. “We have three principle ways to contribute to increasing EnergyMixx value, applying our technology to their solar parks: (i) tracking of flat-plate PV collectors for maximum solar energy production; (ii) high-reliability, high-efficiency and low-cost inversion of the electrical power; and (iii) concentrated PV power production,” he adds.

Building on HelioDynamics’s unique and proprietary concentrator platform technology, EnergyMixx aims to boost the ongoing engineering based on a new receiver that incorporates GaAs cells with an efficiency of 27-36% (about double the efficiency of silicon PV cells).

EnergyMixx, which has acquired a portfolio of concessions of over 550MW of renewable energy, says that it aims to leverage HelioDynamics’s integration to boost its competitive position in the solar power generation area. The technology will be deployed initially in EnergyMixx’s strategically important Italian market, where it has concessions totalling more than 100MW in the solar power production sector. Over the next two years, the firm anticipates installing about 50MW of capacity with HelioDynamics solar concentrating systems.

See related items:

Thin-film solar market to reach 9GW in 2012

Spectrolab wins 350MW CPV order from Australia’s Solar Systems

IMEC claims record 24.7% efficiency for single-junction GaAs-on-Ge solar cell

LCA increases stake in QuantaSol to 25.6%

Search: LCA GaAs GaAs concentrator photovoltaic

Visit: www.heliodynamics.com

Visit: www.energymixx.ch