Promising Solar Power Technologies

New cost effective solar energy products are on the near horizon. Let's take a look at some of the promising ones.

MIT reports prototype solar dish passes first tests.

A team led by MIT students this week successfully tested a prototype of what may be the most cost-efficient solar power system in the world--one team members believe has the potential to revolutionize global energy production.

The system consists of a 12-foot-wide mirrored dish that team members have spent the last several weeks assembling. The dish, made from a lightweight frame of thin, inexpensive aluminum tubing and strips of mirror, concentrates sunlight by a factor of 1,000--creating heat so intense it could melt a bar of steel.

MIT Sloan School of Management lecturer David Pelly, in whose class this project first took shape last fall, says that, "I've looked for years at a variety of solar approaches, and this is the cheapest I've seen. And the key thing in scaling it globally is that all of the materials are inexpensive and accessible anywhere in the world."

Pelly adds that "I've looked all over for solar technology that could scale without subsidies. Almost nothing I've looked at has that potential. This does."

Raw Solar

The website Raw-Solar has this diagram explaining the practical application.

A solar thermal dish reflects the rays of the sun onto a small receiver using specially curved mirrors, concentrating the sunlight 1000 times. The high concentration increases the efficiency of the energy collection by reducing the surface area for thermal losses. A robust tracking system keeps the dish pointed directly at the sun all day, maximizing the available sunlight.

Water is pumped through the receiver where the high intensity sunlight heats it to 212-750F (100-400C), making steam. The steam can then be piped into an existing steam system, such as a district energy system or food processing plant.

What makes this system special vs. its competition is that it can use small flat flexible mirrors that can bend in exactly the right shape to concentrate the reflected sunlight on a precise spot. The materials are all easily produced and the team could put this dish together by hand.

Inquiring minds will want to consider this MIT video demonstration of their solar power dish.
Following is a photographic clip from the demonstration. In the clip below a wooden beam was held where the rays were being concentrated and it immediately caught fire.



Hot Thin Roofs

Let's now turn our attention to Hot Thin Roofs.

A new solar energy product, thin enough to be built into shingles, may finally make the technology competitive.

With energy prices soaring, affordable solar power would be welcomed by any entrepreneur looking to trim the electric bill. Trouble is, power generated by the most widely available technology - panels covered with photovoltaic (PV) systems, which translate sunlight into AC current - still costs two to three times more than electricity generated from coal and other fossil fuels. That may be about to change.

Several startups, including HelioVolt in Austin, Miasolé in Santa Clara, Calif., and Nanosolar in Palo Alto, are working on a new technology called flexible thin film that's on the brink of making solar more competitive. Nanosolar has just begun to ship its thin-film solar systems to a German utility.

Made from pliant sheets of foil, the solar panels can be molded onto roof shingles, which are at once more attractive than clunky, heavy glass panels and less expensive to produce. In fact, the cost of making thin film is so much lower than traditional solar panels that experts say it could produce electricity for about the national average of 10.4 cents a kilowatt hour.

Selling Green

CNN Money is reporting on Selling Green - Making Solar Pay.

Solar energy may be hot these days, but it still costs two or three times more than the power your local utility provides. SunEdison, a Beltsville, Md., startup, has created a new financing model that allows solar to make financial sense for businesses.

The roof of Sea Gull Lighting Products' distribution center in Burlington Township, N.J., is covered with solar panels that the lighting maker did not pay a cent for. They are installed, operated, and maintained by SunEdison. The company acts as a bank, soliciting investors interested in a return on solar energy. SunEdison's investors own the solar panels, and Sea Gull agrees to buy the power.

The problem with the model above is that it requires subsidies to be cost effective. The winning products in this space will need no subsidies.

Algae Power

Another in the series of innovative technologies in the CNN Money report is on Algae Power.

Isaac Berzin, who founded GreenFuel Technologies in 2001, is working with Arizona Public Service to scale his process to commercial levels. He has built a small algae farm next to one of the utility's natural-gas plants. The algae, which grow in racks of plastic bags, feed on the carbon dioxide in the exhaust of the power plant. The system not only reduces the greenhouse gases coming from the power plant by 40% but can also produce biodiesel and animal feedstock as a byproduct without competing with the global food supply.

I find these products exciting and at least two of them seem commercially viable. All of them might be. And the higher oil prices get, the more economically viable some of these and other products become.

Raw-Solar's beauty is a simple design using basic components, without the high cost of custom designed parabolic mirrors. There are plenty of desert areas in the US with huge percentages of cloudless days where such a system could be commercially viable.

Interestingly, the Bush administration halts solar energy projects on federal lands.

The Bush administration has put a two-year stop to solar energy projects on federal lands in Arizona and other Western states while it studies their environmental impact.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Department of Energy will study the impact of solar energy production and other facilities that could be developed on public lands in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, California, Colorado and Nevada.

There are 125 applications by solar energy companies to build facilities on public lands in those states.

The final analysis will show that the cure for peak oil is high enough energy prices.

Instead, the government sponsored solution was ethanol from corn. That "solution" was a complete disaster. US biofuel plants are going bankrupt as fuel prices rise at the pump and grain and fertilizer costs soar. Producing ethanol from corn makes no sense. To make matters worse, ethanol producers receive a taxpayer subsidy. And finally, tariffs make importing ethanol 3 times as expensive as it should be.

Comments

[Gen. Change:]

excellent and concise information...thank you

2008 Jul 01 10:54 AM

[Road Runner:]

Not much new information here. Anyone who keeps up with solar power innovations will realize that all of this has been in the works for several years. The whole problem is making cool lab stuff commercially viable. There are many cool innovations in the lab, but few that have made it to production. Thin film roofing tiles has been something that multiple companies have been trying to make commercially viable for nearly 10 years.

Since this article talks about concentrating solar power, I'd like to mention Ausra. It is a private company that has figured a way to drastically reduce the cost of that decades old technology of concentrating light to boil water and run a turbine to generate electricity. It is building a prototype plant in Southern California. This is what you want to watch, not one of hundreds of cool things happening in a lab somewhere.

2008 Jul 01 11:22 AM

[Universal H...:]

Nice job, Mr. Shedlock.

Thanks for posting an informative article regarding the current state of various solar technologies, complete with diagrams, pictures and hyper links. I appreciate the fact that there are no "name dropping" ticker references- I find that a refreshing departure from the majority of pieces where the authors tend to stump their own investments. Also, great job targeting the article for the more casual green investor by tagging it with TAN, PBW & PBD.

Keep up the good work... looking forward to more.

2008 Jul 01 01:18 PM

[billp37:]

New Mexico's four largest electric utilities on Monday issued a request for proposals for a large-scale solar generating plant that could provide electricity for up to 52,000 homes.

Public Service Company of New Mexico, El Paso Electric, Xcel Energy and Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association jointly issued the request, seeking detailed plans from solar developers for construction of a solar parabolic trough generation plant to feed power to each of the utilities by 2012.

...

www.prosefights.org/pn...

Electric supply trouble ahead

www.prosefights.org/pn...

2008 Jul 01 03:19 PM

[Jason Hamlin:]

i have turned bearish on pbw for the short-term. these clean energy technologies are certainly the future and most of their stock prices will be many times higher than current levels, but i think they get dragged down in the overall economic tailspin over the next 4-6 months. after bush is out of office and particularly if obama is elected, i think we will see another upleg in alternative energy companies. in the meantime, i see sideways and downward price trends.

2008 Jul 01 03:43 PM

[TinyTim:]

Interesting article. Thanks for the update on CGIS. I was hoping from the leadin that these cheap, scaleable concentrators would be good for home use. Barring PV at the focus, don't think so. I have no use for steam unless someone has a cheap, scaleable turbine/condensor/gene... setup...
Looking for residential solar applications, like the solar hot water kits from the 70's.

2008 Jul 01 04:35 PM

[TinyTim:]

BTW, speaking of robust tracking systems for the concentrator dish, I recently saw an inexpensive residential / commercial skylite with an internal compact sun tracking reflector to keep the sunlight focused and pointing down. Surprisingly, it was based on GPS technology.

2008 Jul 01 04:43 PM

[GH:]

Road Runner,

Did you even read the article, much less follow any of the links? Evidently not. Ausra's technology is good - but it has room for further improvement. This can lower the cost of Ausra's technology.

2008 Jul 01 05:28 PM

[Robert Sczech:]

Using concentrating mirrors in order to heat up water sounds impressive (and the first picture displayed surely is a smart publicity stunt). However, all of this does not change the fact that the total amount of energy harvested is limited by the area of the mirror. The power generated by the mirror displayed is perhaps only a few KW on a cloudless day. I doubt that this technology is economically viable.

Similarly, solar panels made from flexible thin film may be significantly cheaper than standard panels. But that advantage could be nullified by a possibly drastically lower life expectancy of the cheaper panels. The cost of a panel should be judged against the total amount of energy collected by the panel during its effective life time. The standard silicium panels come with a warranty of 25 years by their manufacturers. What is the warranty on the flexible sheet panels? 10 years would be insufficient.

2008 Jul 02 01:28 AM

[akapital:]

Great article, very informative, very positive for alt energy, the traditionalists are scared.

Quite humurous that Bush halted solar energy projects on federal lands...he is not known for such environmental considerations therefore one has to wonder about the impetus there?

Indeed, even with these great technologies of free market capitalism I worry about those who rig the game against innovation (i.e. Big Oil and crony capitalists)

Right now alt energy is being manipulated and heavily shorted by by the new york specialist's and they're hedge fund bosses. This takes away credit opportunity for new tech (literally discrediting innovative tech)

Some speculate that illegal naked short selling is behind some of the manipulation of solar and alternative energy stocks by traditional brokerage houses and hedges...they're not quite embracing the future...and it's obvious why, they're deep in oil.

Everyone knows Subsidies are not what are currently driving the solar or alternative energy market right now. Certainly this was the case for many years but it is evident now that higher traditional energy is the prime mover. Thus, these observations are anachronistic.

Interest in alt energy is being driven by the prohibitive cost of oil and other traditional energies. In addition, alt energies are cleaner and have less geopolitical impact as well.

But traditional analysts and investors alike are slow to change...even worse, enemies to it...

The U.S. industrial complex is currently sending bodies to Iraq to fight for oil...is it so far fetched to think that it might be fudging markets in favor of big oil? Big oil is use to getting what it wants. In free market capitalism the stakes are high, very high...and when a whole way of life is threatened (big oil) success will not be left to chance. When the stakes are this high, there will be cheaters... /Show more...

2008 Jul 02 06:11 AM

[sthithaprag...:]

this mode of capturing thermal enrergy from sun's radiation should be integrated into one of the thermo-chemical energy conversion/transport schemes currently under evaluation

2008 Jul 03 03:59 AM

[jjason:]

Thanks for the excellent article Michael.

I have been using two camping solar hot water heaters for three years. I have them on my roof. Each one holds eight gallons and you can buy them at Campmor.

I live in NE PA. In April I shut down my oil furnace and will not start it until October. I also wash clothes and dishes in cold water all year long.

These changes were cost effective and save us money. Total cost about $45.00 which includes some plumbing parts. No plumber is necessary and there is no maintenance cost.

I feel really good about not giving my money away to big oil companies and OPEC.

2008 Jul 04 09:38 AM