The Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) late last week (Sept. 29) said that it installed a 16.8 kilowatt concentrated photovoltaic (PV) solar system in Juarez, Mexico, to help power one of its offices.

“The installation takes advantage of the region’s vast sun resources, and provides about 30 percent of our electricity in the summer and 50 percent to 60 percent in the winter,” said Armando Herrerias, regional planning director for BECC. “We’re also trying to do some modifications to our buildings like insulation and high efficiency light bulbs or even LED [i.e. light-emitting diode lights],” Such changes, he added, could allow the center to become completely energy independent.

The installation consists of two SolFocus SF-1100S concentrated PV panels, which focus sunlight on small, high-efficiency PV cells—cells that can convert up to 40 percent of sunlight into electricity.

“We have been investigating the market in Mexico, particularly the US-Mexico border region for the past 12 months. The solar resource in that region is the highest in North America, and in most of the world,” explained Nancy Hartsoch, vice president of marketing and sales at SolFocus. The company first met with BECC in 2009 at the Border Governor’s Conference hosted by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, she said.

“There is a very active cooperative effort between the US and Mexico to utilize clean energy to improve the energy, environmental and economic outlook for the region,” she said.

The Juarez system isn’t SolFocus’ first system in Mexico, said Hartsoch.

“In April, we installed an array for Volkswagen; the SF-1100S system is being used to power a test track.” That system, she said is “an off-grid installation demonstrating potential of the technology in industrial applications. This array was an asset purchase by Volkswagen.”

The installation is part of BECC’s effort to increase the quality of life on the United States-Mexico border, Herrerias said. The commission originally was founded as part of NAFTA and first focused on water treatment efforts. More recently they’ve expanded their efforts to include clean energy technologies, he explained.