Solar concentration startup NuEdison has merged with fellow Silicon Valley-based solar concentrator developer SV Solar, a source close to the deal told the Cleantech Group.

The merger apparently just closed.

A press time, no announcement had yet been issued by either company.

The two companies' passive solar concentration technologies, neither of which require tracking or moving parts in order to concentrate the sun's rays on a relatively small amount of silicon, appeared strikingly similar when both started talking publicly about their products late last year (see the Cleantech Group's Silicon Valley Solar outed [1].)

Both claimed to be able to produce the same, or better, power output as traditional passive photovoltaic panels, but with a fraction of the costly silicon at the heart of the devices—and without the complications of tracking associated with similar concentration approaches from companies like Soliant [2], formerly Practical Instruments.

The similarity between NuEdison and SV Solar was all the more remarkable given their geographic proximity. The two companies are both located very close to each other: SV Solar is in Santa Clara, California, with NuEdison just down the highway, a few minutes away, in San Jose.

"We get more efficiency out of traditional silicon," NuEdison president/CEO Joe Lichy said of the company's 5x-range optical concentration modules in a recent the Cleantech Group event (see Rubber bullets at solar shoot-out [3].)

"We don't see ourselves as an either/or," said Lichy. "We see our concentrator technology moving all solar vendors forward, helping them achieve more aggressive cost reduction goals."

While NuEdison claimed it was working with customers, SV Solar was first to publicly tout at least one purchase order for 10MW of the company's forthcoming panels from Pacific Power Management, a deal worth $35M USD.

There's no word on terms of the deal between the two.