The Green Optimistic

An image is worth a thousand words. As you may see in the picture above, this balloon, made by Cool Earth, is concentrating the solar power to a focal point, where a photovoltaic solar cell is harnessing the light.

The solar balloon produces 400 times the electricity that a normal, ground solar cell would produce without the concentrator. Cool Earth is already constructing a balloon-based power plant in Livermore, CA. When finished, the power plant will generate 1.4 MW, with plans to increase the power furthermore.

“Plastic thin film is abundant and cheap,” said Cool Earth Solar CEO Rob Lamkin. “It only costs two dollars for the plastic material necessary for our solar concentrator.”

With inventions like MIT’s recent high efficiency thin film solar cell, the solar balloon may go even further with the solar energy harnessing.

You may also like to read about:

Sharp and Enel to Produce 1 GigaWatt Thin Film Solar Power Yearly IBM’s Efficient Thin Film Solar Cell Made of Cheap Materials Close Competition for Most Efficient Concentrator Solar Cells from U.S.-Based Spire Corporation Solexant’s Single Layer Thin Film Solar Cell Proves Both Efficient and Cheap Dutch Researchers Designing 65% Efficient Nanowire Solar Cells France’s Largest Photovoltaic Solar Power Plant to be Built In Abandoned NATO Site

By Ovidiu on December 2nd, 2008

Get E-mail Updates

Subscribe by RSS