Spanish renewable energy firm Sener and Abu Dhabi's clean-energy initiative, Masdar, announced a joint venture on Wednesday to build several power plants fueled by the sun's heat.
The newly created firm, Torresol Energy, said it plans to build at least two large concentrating solar power plants a year with a goal of generating 320 megawatts over the next 5 years and 1,000 megawatts in 10 years. A large coal-fired power plant typically can produce hundreds of megawatts of electricity.
In a solar tower, mirrors reflect light to generate heat at the tower top where steam is made to turn a turbine.
(Credit: Torresol Energy)One of the designs that the venture intends to use is a solar receiver tower to be built in Abu Dhabi.
In a tower construction, several mirrors are mounted on the ground to reflect light to the top of a tower, where steam is created to turn an electricity turbine. A handful of other companies, including BrightSource Energy and eSolar, are pursuing a similar tower design.
The new company underscores the surge in investment on solar thermal technologies, which use the sun's heat, rather than photovoltaic panels, to generate electricity.
A number of solar thermal power plants are being proposed for the Southwest United States and Spain, where conditions are best.
Sener already operates three 50 megawatt plants that use parabolic troughs to reflect light and generate heat. They also incorporate molten salt storage to generate electricity when the sun is not shining.
Promethean Power, a company spun out of MIT to build a solar-powered refrigerator, has secured initial funding from an Indian conglomerate that will help manufacture and distribute the product.
The Solar Turbine Group is a nonprofit organization formed by students from the Massachusetts Institute of technology that developed the system Promethean Power intends to commercialize.
Parabolic troughs to generate heat and electricity.
(Credit: Solar Turbine Group)STG has already built some of its solar turbines in the African country of Lesotho which are used for creating hot water and electricity.
The system uses parabolic troughs to generate the heat from sunlight to heat a liquid, which creates steam to turn a turbine to make electricity. This solar thermal technology is being used at large scale for utilities. A Hawaiian company called Sopogy is building a smaller-scale trough system it intends to sell to utilities.
Promethean Power did market research and found that refrigeration in developing countries like India offers a good business opportunity, said Sorin Grama, the company's president.
Most commercial refrigerators run on diesel generators, which make up about half the cost of the overall system. It intends to make the refrigerator from commonly used car parts so it can be easily repaired in rural areas, he said.
The goal is to make a system that is also able to work by burning natural gas or biomass, which can be readily available in rural areas, said engineer Libby Weyman.
The company is in negotiations with an investor and expects to finalize something within two months, said Sam White, the company's chief operating officer, on Tuesday.
"It's quite interesting that the money is coming from India, where the product will be manufactured and distributed," White said. "Everyone is going after where the money is in the United States. We feel like we're being contrary and enjoying going after this huge untapped market."
During a presentation at the Conference on Clean Energy in Boston last month, Grama said the company was looking for $1.3 million to build an alpha system. He added that the company has partnered with ITT Bombay on the engineering and design of the product.
White said the company hopes to have an alpha product in the first year, with field testing taking place in the second year, and manufacturing beginning in its third year of operation.
The Solar Turbine Group is trying to bring refrigeration to emerging nations by harnessing the power of the sun.
The organization, which consists largely of MIT alumni, has devised a solar thermal generator that can be brought to market for $12,000 or less. A typical system can generate 600 watts of electricity or 20 kilowatts of energy for heating and cooling, according to Sam White, director for STG. The same system can also produce both at the same time, albeit less of each.
Parabolic mirror for capturing the sun
(Credit: Solar Turbine Group)Like other solar thermal systems, STG uses mirrors. Mirrors concentrate heat from the sun onto a tube filled with a liquid (in this case glycol). The heat from the liquid can then be used in two ways. One, the heat can be transferred to another liquid. The second liquid gets vaporized and ultimately gets used to turn a turbine to create electricity.
Two, heat from the glycol can be used to boil refrigerant.
Although many villages in emerging nations don't have electricity, a lack of refrigeration is perhaps a more dire problem. Without refrigeration, food-borne diseases spread more rapidly. Farmers also can't store their crops in hopes of getting a better price, noted White. Thus, something like this could help improve health and local economies.
One reason the Northern Hemisphere (in my mind) moved ahead of the Southern Hemisphere is that the people there had to only figure out heating, a relatively straightforward process, rather than cooling. (I came up with that idea one day in Malaysia after walking into an air-conditioned Burger King after four hours in the midday sun.)
Hawaii's Sopogy is marketing similar devices in developed countries.
The company has installed a few prototypes in Lesotho and wants to put some in India. What has the group learned? That they have to show locals applications where and how the generator can be used. Locals just don't come up with the ideas on their own at first. "That was probably the most useful insight," he said.
The low cost comes in part because many of the parts required to build one of its solar generators are actually old car parts, White said. There's another problem solved: putting salvage to good use.
(Credit:
Ausra)
DAVIS, Calif.--Ausra CEO Peter Le Lievre says it will only take a little bit of desert to light up the United States.
Ausra has developed technology for converting heat from the sun into electricity. The trick is that it's far more efficient, the company claims, than traditional solar thermal technologies from companies such as Solel and Acciona.
The process works as follows: Water goes into a tube that sits over an array of flat mirrors in the desert. By the time it gets to the end of the tube, the water turns to steam, which then turns a generator. Ausra can use water, rather than oil like other companies, because its tube can withstand high pressures. You can read more about Ausra here, including the $40 million the company got.
Le Lievre told an audience at the Going Green conference that a 92-mile square (92 miles a side, which works out to be a little less than 8,500 square miles) in the desert--a very small amount--could provide all of the electricity in the country. "We are more than two times more efficient when it comes to land," he said. Update: We originally gave the wrong dimensions for that land area. The numbers are now correct.
Ausra's system is also cheaper, he claims. "We are at 10 cents a kilowatt hour today," he said. With mass manufacturing, we will fall below gas (natural gas plants) and beat coal."
Those are big words. Solar thermal now costs about twice as much as regular electricity. Regular electricity goes for around 5 to 8 cents a kilowatt hour.
Ausra will have a chance to prove its case. The company, which wants to build a 175-megawatt plant in California that would take up a square mile, is getting the permits now and hopes to have it operating in three years.
Here's a convergence device you probably haven't heard much about at technology conferences, but it's interesting.
SolarAttic sells a system--the Pool Convection System 2--that sucks hot air out of the attic of your house and pumps it into a heat exchanger to heat your pool. In the summertime, the temperature in your attic can get up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit, says SolarAttic vice president James Kantorowicz.
A SolarAttic pool heater
(Credit: SolarAttic )"It also helps cool down the house by transferring that heat out of the attic," he said.
The system costs around $5,000 (including installation), which makes it comparable to the better solar thermal pool heaters out there on the market. The solar thermal heaters--which gather heat from the sun with rooftop panels--will not cool off your house much, though, Kantorowicz adds.
Techincally, both systems do the same thing. in SolarAttic's case, it is harvesting solar energy from warmed air, and the energy is concentrated by the attic, but there's that additional benefit of getting the heat out of the home. But, unlike solar panel systems, SolarAttic's device needs an electric fan.
Of course, it won't heat your pool in the winter, but fewer people swim then anyway.
The single-fan unit you see there will heat a 75,000-gallon pool, he added.
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