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Page added on May 4, 2012
New Solar Collector Heralds New Era in CSP
Solar thermal energy technology has taken an important step further with a new collaboration between 3M’s Renewable Energy Division and Gossamer Space Frames. The companies yesterday unveiled a new parabolic trough solar collector technology designed to reduce costs and equipment for Concentrated Solar Power systems. CSP is a solar system whereby sunlight is converted to heat and then the heat is converted to electricity. The demonstration system is installed at the Sunray Energy facility in Daggett, California.
3M and Gossamer’s collector is called Large Aperture Trough (LAT 73). It features a concentration factor of over 100x and an aperture size of 7.3m. It also features 3M’s high reflectivity Solar Mirror Film 1100. These panels are 50 percent lighter than glass and they offer 94.5 reflectivity.
It is a combination of optical performance and light weight that made possible the design of the large aperture collector. The system has been verified by the National renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which measured an optical accuracy of more than 99 percent. The companies add these collector’s specs are worldwide benchmarks for the industry and promise a cost reduction of 25 percent.
“The LAT technology is an exciting development for the CSP industry, as it demonstrates the possibilities in solar concentrating technology,” said Dr. Dan Chen, business development manager at 3M Renewable Energy Division.
8 Comments on "New Solar Collector Heralds New Era in CSP"
BillT on Fri, 4th May 2012 3:09 pm
Wouldn’t simple glass magnifying lens’ aimed at a heat target do the same thing without rare earths and so much tech? I could fry an ant in seconds with a 1″ diameter toy magnifier 50 years ago. Tell me why that would not work if it was set to track the sun and be reflected off of another mirror to the target, and all of it sync’d by a computer? After all, a laptop should be able to do that today. Or isn’t that profitable enough? After all, glass is cheap and plentiful. and gears, etc. are ‘off the shelf’ items today.
Just askin’.
Kenz300 on Fri, 4th May 2012 5:15 pm
Wind, solar, wave energy, and geothermal are the future. The price of wind and solar keep dropping while the cost of oil, coal and nuclear keep rising.
Max Reid on Fri, 4th May 2012 5:40 pm
Another interesting type of Solar Power. It uses light from 3 dimensions and it can generate 1 KW in just 1 sq. meter.
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/05/03/solarphasec-solar-power-meets-art/
Cabra1080 on Fri, 4th May 2012 5:45 pm
We are making great strides in capturing solar energy. Now the engineering problem of the century is how to store it [economically and practically] so we can have energy available on cloudy days and at night. Banks of lead-acid batteries don’t cut it. Molten sodium chloride sounds promising for storing the thermal energy. Hopefully big improvements can be made in solar thermal and electrical storage before the remaining fossil fuels get too scarce and expensive and crash the economy.
BillT on Sat, 5th May 2012 12:46 am
Cabra, there can be all kinds of technical breakthroughs, but if the new tech costs $1 trillion per city to build, and the city is broke, it will not be used. The Us is a debtor country. The biggest debtor in the world ever. There is no big money to do anything except exist.
No other country is in the position to invest trillions to build a new energy system. The current energy system was built over the last 150 years. It will NOT be replaced in the next 10 by a different system. End of story.
Jared on Sat, 5th May 2012 3:30 am
By evaporating water with the magnifying lenses, you can move water uphill without pumps or electricity. Pumping water uphill and using gravity as our source for resistance in the “battery” would be simple and de-salinize ocean water.
Arthur on Sun, 6th May 2012 1:38 pm
@Bill: “there can be all kinds of technical breakthroughs, but if the new tech costs $1 trillion per city to build, and the city is broke, it will not be used”
It will not cost 1 trillion per city.
– PV solar costs 1000$ per installed kW
– Windenergy costs 1000$ per installed kW
A city of 100,000 needs to invest 100 million $, that is 0.01% of a trillion. For the developed world this is peanuts. It is like for every household paying for a new Apple laptop. And it replaces the monthly electricity bill. Germany will have the job done before 2020. Mind you, I am talking only about electricity.
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2012/05/03/solar-energy-for-less-than-1watt/
Arthur on Sun, 6th May 2012 1:51 pm
Here is similar, but already recently installed CSP project in Spain (50 MW):
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/andasol-3-csp-plant/
The demonstration project in California, mentioned in the article has 0.3 MW. Nevertheless, a cost reduction of 25% is spectacular.
I have to admit that the longer I pay attention to the energy subject, the less pessimistic I become. I still think we are going to have big economic problems and overall we will witness decline, but I do not think society is going to collapse, at least not in Europe and America. And yes, ‘new’ technology, like this CSP collector, is going to be the answer. Just like the cost of computers have come down considerable in the past 25 years, we will see a similar development in the energy field.