concentrated solar power Archives – The Green Optimistic

The Way China Invests Heavily in Concentrated Solar Power

Arsenij Percov — Fri, 20 Jul 2018 20:08:06 +0000

China’s power system operators must invest in renewable energy to meet climate commitments. The cheapest options are wind power and PV, but they deliver power only when it’s sunny or windy. Their more expensive alternative, Concentrated Solar Power, can store its solar energy relatively inexpensively, also for long durations, and can deliver power regardless of […]

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World’s First Ever Solar Plant Provides Power Day and Night

Mila Luleva — Tue, 21 Jun 2016 18:48:25 +0000

Crescent Dunes Project, located in Nevada, goes down in history as the first ever solar power plant, which provides clean electricity 24 hours a day. Renewable energy is slowly getting closer to the place on the energy market that it deserves. Technology improves, reliability and efficiency increase, and consequently investments get a boost too. Limitations […]

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SolSource – Affordable, Eco-Friendly Outdoor Solar Cooker

Mila Luleva — Thu, 02 Jun 2016 07:09:03 +0000

SolSource is a new type of outdoor cooker, which uses concentrated sunlight to grill your favorite meal faster than ever. Outdoor cooking is something that everyone enjoys in these wonderful long summer days. It gets even better when some sort of clean energy tech is involved, minimizing costs, minimizing emissions and simply out-cooling all alternatives. SolSource […]

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Scientists Store Solar Energy in Desert Sand

Mila Luleva — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 17:41:18 +0000

Researchers have found a new, eco-friendly and highly efficient way to store solar energy using desert sand. While some research teams are spending long hours, trying to develop the ultimate solar energy storage system, others just have to look out of their window and they have it all in front of their eyes. A team from the Masdar […]

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‘Hydricity’ Uses Solar Power To Produce and Store Hydrogen

Mila Luleva — Fri, 18 Dec 2015 08:44:43 +0000

Hydricity is a new hybrid concept, which combines solar power with hydrogen production and storage, to ensure constant power generation and highly efficient, chemical-free, energy storage. The scientific community is all about boosting solar cell efficiency, producing hydrogen by splitting the water molecule, and improving energy storage capacity these days. No hour goes by without […]

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ARPA-E-backed Hybrid Solar Cells Make Better Use of Light, Day or Night

Benji Jerew — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 15:02:48 +0000

Earth gets the equivalent of 84TWh/day in solar power at the surface, but current technology doesn’t allow us to collect it all, which is a shame, because the energy consumption of the entire planet is just 12TWh/day. Part of the problem is that solar power is intermittent, that is, it can only generate electricity during […]

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Shams 1: World’s Largest CSP Operates in The Middle East

Mila Luleva — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 19:25:21 +0000

The world’s biggest concentrated solar power plant has gone online in the United Arab Emirates yesterday. ‘Shams 1‘ was designed and developed by Shams Power Company, and is owned by the giants in the industry – Masdar, Abengoa Solar and Total. Located in the richest in oil reserves Middle East, the power plant covers an area of […]

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Concentrated Solar Photovoltaics Reduce Long-term Solar Energy Costs

Mila Luleva — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 19:01:11 +0000

RayGen Reseources, a company that provides solar power services, based in Melbourne, was granted a funding of $1.6 million to produce a 2kW concentrated solar photovoltaic (CPV) prototype and a 200kW pilot plant. The new technology is the first ever to combine high efficiency solar cells and a low cost heliostat collector system. This technology […]

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Concentrated Solar Power for High Temperature Chemical Reactions

Benji Jerew — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 20:28:30 +0000

The conditions to carry out some of the chemical reactions required for modern industry aren’t easily achieved, some requiring millions of pounds of pressure, or thousands of degrees of heat. When you stand outside on a sunny day, you feel on your skin just a little bit of an untapped source of energy that, still, […]

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Abengoa Announces First Concentrating Solar Power Plants in Africa

Benji Jerew — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 00:56:21 +0000

Abengoa Solar, a world renowned designer of solar power systems, has just announced two Concentrating Solar Power [CSP] plants to be built in Africa. These will be the first full-scale solar projects on the African continent, as well as the largest in the world to date. Financed in part by a grant by South Africa, […]

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Spinning Conical Solar Cells Increase Output Twenty-Fold

Janina Lazo-Cruz — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 12:03:55 +0000

V3Solar has launched an innovative design to the conventional flat solar cells resulting to a twenty-fold increase in its output, owing to its concentrator lenses, conical shape, and revolving assembly. The conical shape with 56o angle of the one-meter high, one-meter-wide V3Solar Spin Cells indulges maximization of harvesting light, omitting the need for an active […]

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Spherical Lenses by German Architect Could Revolutionize CSP Systems

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 18:00:09 +0000

Traditionally, concentrated solar power systems have been made of concave mirrors that reflect sunlight onto a solar cell or from Fresnel lenses that focus the light behind them. However, there have been lots of practical limitations to using such systems, one of them being that you always have to follow the Sun – and that […]

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Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project to Power Las Vegas Starting Next Year

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:41:41 +0000

Molten salt storage facilities have literally flooded the news lately, as they’re present in most of the countries harvesting solar power in a serious manner. However, SolarReserve, a NV-based company, plans to power Las Vegas’s city lights with such a system – a big challenge, no matter how you think of it. The 540-foot high […]

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New Concentrated Solar Power Plant Design Reduces Land Use, Increases Efficiency

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 11:26:41 +0000

Probably the most efficient way of harnessing solar power is by using Concentrated Solar Power plants, or CSPs. Their design, however, is based on large mirrors (heliostats) placed in rows around a central tower, onto which they reflect the sun’s energy. These heliostats are placed in an expanding formation, the mirror in the back being […]

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Sunengy Signs Contract With Tata Power for Floating Concentrated Solar System

Ovidiu Sandru — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:36:02 +0000

Indian company Tata is getting more and more involved in the renewable energy sector. After the agreement their CEO had with Daniel Nocera for producing energy from water, they now make a deal with Australia-based Sunengy, which manufactures LSAs (Liquid Solar Arrays), basically floating concentrated solar power systems (CSP).

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13kW Solar Concentrators for Heating Water at Home Produced by Canadian Firm

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:14:05 +0000

Do you remember Eric Jacqmain, who built his "Death Ray," a solar concentrator that was able to melt everything that stood in its path? Well, Solar Beam, a Canadian company now produces solar concentrators, based on the same principle Eric used, but aimed at heating your home and providing hot water... for free.

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Efficiency-Boosting Solar Concentrators from HyperSolar a Step Closer to Commercialization

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:40:16 +0000

Tuning existing solar cells so they run at their best is the hardest thing to do next to creating new ones, with the most advanced technology to date. HyperSolar, a company specialized in building solar concentrators, has reached that point where they can say they'll be able to develop a commercial product in the following period.

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Eric’s Homemade Mirror Solar Concentrator Melts Metals and Concrete in Seconds (Video)

Ovidiu Sandru — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:11:04 +0000

Here's Eric Jacqmain, who built his "Death Ray" out of a normal satellite dish with 5,800 small mirrors on it. He worked about 24 hours on the project whose results you can see in the video below.

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The Blythe Solar Power Project Approved by Federal Regulators For Building 1 GW Plant

Ovidiu Sandru — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 08:52:34 +0000

The Blythe Solar Power Project, that we talked about in a previous article, has been approved by the U.S. federal regulators. It will occupy 7,000 acres in Riverside County, California, and will generate more than 1 gigawatt of totally renewable energy.

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Archimede: World's First Concentrated Solar Power Plant That Uses Molten Salts as Energy Storage

Ovidiu Sandru — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:59:29 +0000

First of all, Italy is one of the leading innovators in solar power. On July 15, their electricity company Enel has unveiled Archimede, their most innovative power plant using concentrated solar power (CSP) technology, where parabolic mirrors focus the Sun's light onto capturing surfaces which take the heat to the storage location. For the first time in the world, molten salts have been used as storage for the heat they captured from the Sun.

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Efficient Concentrated Solar Cell Technology Given $129 Million Credit for Development

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:29:44 +0000

Amonix, a CA-based startup company, is developing ultra-efficient solar cells based on concentrated photovoltaic technology, combining cheap yet powerful lenses, a Sun-tracking system and efficient silicon solar cells, but in smaller quantities than if spread on a panel without lenses.

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Colorado Company Uses Concentrated Solar Power to Transform Biomass into Gasoline

Ovidiu Sandru — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:09:20 +0000

Sundrop Fuels, a Louisville, CO, -based company has developed a method of using concentrated solar power to heat the biomass to 1200 or 1300 ºC, and even produce syngas more efficiently than the standard technology, which uses only 30 to 35 percent of the biomass.

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Semprius's Micrometric Solar Cells Efficient in Concentrated Photovoltaic Systems

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:56:40 +0000

Concentrated photovoltaic systems are usually more effective than regular, flat ones, because a lens focuses the sunlight on a smaller surface of some efficient and more expensive solar cells 500 times stronger than the cells would receive in regular operation. Heat is mostly a problem with concentrated PV systems, since it has to be efficiently dissipated through complex and expensive cooling technique.

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Beam-Down Solar Concentrator Dramatically Reduces Costs at Price of Efficiency

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:02:49 +0000

By seeking to cut costs with the production of energy and building the necessary infrastructure, scientists from the Masdar Institute along with their colleagues from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Cosmo Oil (?) are studying how to convert old, expensive solar concentrator technology to a new and more flexible one: The Beam Down Project.

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Harvesting Solar Power in Spain With Very Efficient 30 Year Old Technologies

Cristi — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:41:38 +0000

Abengoa Solar and E.ON Climate & Renewables have teamed up to build two 50MW concentrating solar power plants in Spain. With a total investment of around 550 million Euro, Helioenergy 1 & 2 will harvest solar power in the best area in Europe in terms of solar radiation: Ecija Seville in Southern Spain. Helioenergy 1 […]

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Micro-Turbine Designed to Be Powered by Solar Thermal Energy

Mike Sandru — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:58:27 +0000

Israel-based HelioFocus Ltd and the Californian Capstone Turbine Corporation have announced an agreement to build a micro-turbine that will produce electricity from concentrated solar energy.

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Concentrated Solar Power Could Lower Price of Electricity to $0.1/kW by 2020

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:45:16 +0000

CSP stands for Concentrated Solar Power, and it really isn't a cutting edge technology. It uses solar power, focused through mirrors, to heat water in a central tower (like in the image on the left), create steam, and spin a turbine to generate electricity. It's so simple and effective that it can currently deliver electricity at €0.15 to €0.23 a kilowatt.

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