SolarReserve to Build Utility-Scale Molten Salt Storage for Solar Power Posted on December 28th, 2009
A company called SolarReserve has signed a eal with NV Energy, a Nevada power company, to supply a molten salt storage system for solar power storage.
The company, based in Santa Monica, California, has agreed to sell 25 years of off-peak power to NV Energy to store and sell back to the tune of 480,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually. A concentrating solar collector will heat salt, liquefying it into a molten state. The super-heated salt will then be used to heat water and turn a turbine, producing power overnight when the sun is not supplying solar arrays. This power will be sold to the utility.
Here’s a diagram of how this works:
The plant will be built at a facility in Tonapah, Nevada beginning sometime next year, pending approval from the Nevada Public Utilities Commission.
California’s power utility, PG&E, has also signed a deal with SolarReserve for their energy storage facility at Rice Airfield in San Bernardino County, California. That project is still awaiting approval of state regulators. It’s a solar power plant scheduled to deliver 150 megawatts of power by 2013.
Pretty cool developments. Molten salt is one of the most efficient ways of storing heat energy from the sun, especially in areas that do not tend to get cold in the winter. Many molten storage facilities can be 99% efficient, losing very little of their heat energy to the atmosphere.
Breakthroughs in Green Energy Tech 2009 – Part 2, Solar (again) Posted on December 21st, 2009
In the first installment of this series, I talked about breakthroughs in small-scale solar. The kind of solar panels and 
photovoltaics you install at your home, office, or small building. Today, I want to talk about large-scale or utility-scale solar power generation.
These breakthroughs are large, physically. Most utility-scale solar photovoltaics take one of three basic schema:
- Straight solar photovoltaics – huge fields of solar panels collecting sunlight and generating electricity.
- Solar collection focused on a central point which super-heats a liquid to create steam for turning a turbine and generating power.
- Solar conversion for converting solar energy into another energy type, usually hydrogen or another energy-dense element.
The second type is the most common for megawatt scale power generation, though most of the earliest solar power plants were using the first method. The third method is the most experimental with research going into all kinds of bio-generation and other methods for producing hydrogen, methane, and other gases or elements for energy storage and conversion to electricity.
As I pointed out in the first installment, the biggest down-side to solar power is that it’s only available when there’s sunlight. If anything interferes with that (night time, exploding volcanoes, Al Gore’s head) light hitting those solar panels, then the power won’t be generated. In addition, the rate of power generated will depend in large part on the geo-location of the panels, the time of year, and so forth. Solar power is, to put it bluntly, fickle.
So this explains why the third avenue of solar power generation is such a hot topic now. In order to really replace petroleum sources (including coal), solar has to be reliable and available 24/7/365.
Spain’s huge Solar Tower, for instance, generates 20 megawatts of power.. but only for about six hours a day. The rest of the time, it’s under-capacity or not producing at all. The tower, for the record, is one of the second type of generators, producing steam to turn a turbine inside the tower.
Don’t worry, though, some of the brightest minds in engineering and electronics are working on that problem. MIT, for instance, is looking into terawatt-scale photovoltaics. Why mess around with the small stuff? Right?
Solar has come a long way and is continuing to advance. While it’s not likely to be the only big hitter of our power needs as we turn away from methods that burn and pollute, it’s going to be the right cross or the haymaker in the overall repertoire we use to box with power generation in the near future.
In our next installment of this series, we’ll look at two of my favorite subjects: wind and hydrogen. Stay tuned!
Breakthroughs in Green Energy Tech 2009 – Part 1, Solar Posted on December 19th, 2009
There’s a lot of great stuff going on in fields related to energy. From solar panels to bio-fuels and from hydrogen fuel cells to full-spectrum petroleum replacements, there is a ton of awesome technology coming forward to give us a less polluting, more sustainable way to power our everyday lives. At no time in known human history has technology been so abundant and promising.
I’ve covered a lot of these breakthroughs and promising new ideas here since the blog’s creation, but I thought a nice 
run-down of the greatest stuff to come would be a great way to wrap up 2009. In part one, we’ll look at solar panels, specifically solar photovoltaics (electricity generation).
Most people just think of “solar panels” when they really mean making power from the sun. The term “solar panel” is a lot broader than just the idea of gathering sunlight to make electricity (photovoltaics). Regardless, solar power has been around for a long time. The picture at right, in fact, was when Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof of the White House in the 1970s. They’ve come a long way since then.
I covered several new roofing techs emerging right now back in October, with a great new light-gathering tech for use with solar panels that use colored glass to improve the efficiency. Just a couple of days ago, I also showed you a new nano-technology for keeping glass cleaner, improving PV efficiency.
How about solar panels that work at night? Sunlight making electricity at night? Hey, anything’s possible. These panels actually soak up infrared heat, which lasts much longer than the sun’s daily traverse through the sky.
In fact, the cost of solar PVs are coming down drastically. The most expensive component of solar power collection is the silicon needed to coat the photovoltaic cells so they’ll generate electricity. A lot of research is focused on lowering the amount or eliminating altogether the silicon used. One promising tech for removing it entirely is being worked on by Mitsubishi, which I covered in July.
And last, but not least, of course, what good are solar panels if they make your house look ugly? Exactly. Well, there are people working on that too. In July, I showed you one line of that research that is now available on the market.
Yep, solar power generation has come a long way. In fact, I skipped the entire large-scale production of electrical generation from solar sources. Maybe I’ll cover that in the next segment of this series. :)
Solar Powered Hat and Gloves Posted on December 1st, 2009
OK, eco-chic has officially gone nuts. I don’t mean “dresses made out of lettuce” loony, I mean totally bonkers. I’ve probably told you about when I was selling “solar powered laundry driers” on eBay. Right? It was heavy string and instructions. Get it?
Ya, well, now there are solar-powered knit hats and gloves. Really. Look at the picture. I didn’t waste hours Photoshopping that just to amuse you. Those are for real. They’re offered at a site called Ecouterre.com. Sounds French. That explains some things.
Anyway, those little black designs you see on there that look like snowflakes are tiny little solar cells. They collect sunlight and turn it into heat, which radiates through the material.
I don’t know how it is in Germany (the designer’s name is Yiran Qian from Germany), but over here, sunlight is heat. So if the sun’s out enough to power your solar panels… it’s probably out enough to warm you up on its own too. Maybe in Germany sunelichten equalen nein heaten. Oh, and yellow is a heat-reflective color. Someone should tell this guy that part too.
Or maybe things are different in Europe. I’ve never been there and every European I’ve ever met is a lunatic.
So here you go. “Endless warm” from your sun-powered heat hat and gloves. It’ll impress the others at the ski lodge, I guess.
Google TechTalk: Terawatt-Scale Photovoltaics with MIT Posted on November 23rd, 2009
This video is over an hour long, but if you have some time, it’s well worth it. In it, discussion of the MIT Energy Initiative and scaling technologies towards solar stations which measure their output in terawatts (two steps up from megawatt). That’s huge power output!
This kind of technology could be here by 2030 – 2050 at the current pace of solar innovation.
