Grid parity could be 15 months away

Grid parity ... it's what we're all hoping for. That magical moment when solar power (or other renewables for that matter) become available at the cost of current power sources.

And, if Sunrgi's claims are to be believed, it could be only 15 months away.

Sunrgi's technology is fairly simple. Basically it uses a magnifying glass to concentrate the power of the sun 1,600 times onto a tiny square of the most efficient photovoltaic material on the planet.

While others are concentrating on bringing the price of the panels down (along with efficiency), Sunrgi actually uses panels from Spectrolab, which are three times more efficient than the cheap panels being produced by NanoSolar.

The photovoltaic cells remain efficient even when collecting these huge amounts of light per square centemeter. However, they don't remain efficient at 3,000 degrees F. In fact, if this much light were concentrated on the cells, and the cells were not cooled, they would melt.

Sunrgi has developed a proprietary cooling system to keep the ultra-expensive cells at nominal temperatures even at the hottest part of the hottest day. You can see, in the render, that the bottom of the panels actually look like huge CPU heat sinks.

By using such a small amount of photovoltaic material, and such a large amount of cheap magnifying glasses, Sunrgi says that its system should be extremely inexpensive. In fact, the company says that, in sunny climates, its product will be sold for around $0.05 per kilowatt, about the cost of coal.

Sunrgi already has demonstration units running and hope to be selling their first units (to utilities and large businesses) in 12 to 15 months.