Solar Monkey and Portuguese company, WS Energia, today announced an agreement to establish a new generation of high precision, reliable and affordable solar tracking systems in North America based on WS Energia’s patented award winning tracker design. According to both companies, these products increase output efficiencies, reliability, and lower the costs of solar energy tracking systems over those currently available.

Solar Monkey’s CEO, Matthew McCullough said, “We are very pleased to be partnering with WS Energia; a company clearly deeply committed to providing innovative solutions to today’s energy challenges. These trackers will help us continue to reduce the cost of solar energy.”

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The company said that it believes that the cost of incorporating sun tracking technology into solar energy systems has been high compared to fixed-tilt ground mounted systems. Solar energy generation can be improved by as much as 35% through the use of tracking systems. Now that these highly reliable solutions exist, tracking technology will make sense for many more applications, facilitating their broader adoption in North America.

The agreement with Solar Monkey will allow the companies to jointly develop manufacturing and production facilities within the US using WS Energia’s technology already available in the EU. WS Energia Research has developed a suite of solar tracking and concentrating technologies and has product installations operating throughout Europe. Gianfranco Sorasio, president of WS Energia, said, “WS Energia’s advanced technology, combined with Solar Monkey’s sales, marketing and distribution capabilities will provide a valuable tool for consumers, businesses and utilities throughout North America to reliably increase solar energy production.”

In 2006 WS Energia created and patented ‘DoubleSun’, a technology platform which is the core of its solar concentrators that are claimed to be easy to make and mount, and are reliable.

The company says that its low-level solar optics manufacture and tracker production are the foundation of the HSUN Project, the PV technology that in 2010 will allow WS Energia to ship photovoltaic generators able to produce clean electricity at prices competitive with final clients’ electricity cost.