concentrated solar

By storing solar energy in molten salt, BrightSource Energy can now build one less solar power plant.

The company said today that it is adding energy storage to three planned solar projects that will supply power to utility Southern California Edison.

Instead of building seven power plants to provide about 4 million megawatt-hours per year, BrightSource now expects to be able to meet that with six concentrating solar plants to be built over the next six years, including three that will have storage. It is now constructing its first project, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which will not have … Read more

Talk about walking the walk when it comes to solar energy.

Concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) manufacturer Amonix has built a factory and office space that uses solar panels as the sole power source, the company announced Wednesday.

The 214,000 square-foot facility uses eight of the company's MegaModule CPV solar systems, to serve the entire power need for the production plant and some connected office space. The system supplies "100 percent of the North Las Vegas facility's energy needs," according to Amonix.

Of course, it should be noted that this plant is located in Nevada, an area … Read more

The Department of Energy has decided to invest $60 million over the next three years to develop and commercialize concentrated solar technology, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced yesterday afternoon.

This investment comes out of the U.S. government's SunShot Initiative, a plan to reduce the cost of solar energy in the U.S. by 75 percent in order to make it more cost effective and competitive with other energy sources, according to Chu.

What is interesting about this particular funding is that the DOE seems to have listened to the critics of concentrated solar and gotten very specific about … Read more

Solar company Stirling Energy Systems has filed for bankruptcy, another casualty of a brutal global price war that is favoring commodity photovoltaic panels.

The Scottsdale, Arizona-based company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy late last week. The utility-scale solar company's largest investor is renewable energy developer NTR of Dublin, Ireland.

Founded in 1996, Stirling Energy Systems makes a large, 38-foot-high reflective dish which concentrates sunlight onto a Stirling engine to generate electricity. The 25-kilowatt SunCatcher dishes are designed to be used as building blocks for utility-scale solar farms in desert areas with sufficient sunlight.

After decades of development including a … Read more

Developers of the giant Blythe Solar Power Project in California have switched from solar thermal technology to photovoltaic solar panels, one of a string of similar changes at large-scale solar projects.

Solar Millennium today said that the first 500-megawatt phase of the Blythe plant will use photovoltaic (PV) panels because the economics work better.

The company earlier this year had received a conditional loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to develop a concentrating solar thermal plant, where heat from mirrored troughs makes steam that is passed through a turbine to generate electricity. But Germany-based Solar Millennium and its U.… Read more

BrightSource Energy has proposed a second, utility-scale solar power project in California, offering a changed plant design in an effort to avoid environmental permitting problems.

The Oakland, Calif.-based company today said it submitted an application to the California Energy Commission for two solar power plants able to generate 250 megawatts each in Inyo County, Calif. Called the Hidden Hills Solar Electric Generating System, the project would generate power by using a field of sun-tracking mirrors to create high-temperature steam that turns a standard electricity turbine.

BrightSource's Ivanpah solar power plant in Southern California is one of the few … Read more

BrightSource Energy today announced molten salt energy storage for its heat-driven solar power plants, touting the advantages over flat solar photovoltaic panels.

With the storage, BrightSource solar power plants can deliver electricity to the grid consistently and into the evening hours. That makes the solar power more valuable because utilities pay more for power during peak hours, which continues past nightfall.

BrightSource's solar tower technology generates steam from a field of mirrors called heliostats shining onto a tower. The steam is fed into a conventional turbine to generate electricity. After turning the turbine, the steam is condensed into water … Read more

A power plant planned for Turkey will use a combination of energy sources--wind, solar, and natural gas--to deliver round-the-clock electricity service.

General Electric today said that it will supply the equipment for a 508-megawatt plant to developer MetCap Energy, which expects to complete the project by 2015. The plant in Karaman, Turkey, is projected to power more than 600,000 homes.

The project is unusual in that a single facility will draw on three sources to deliver "baseload" power, or the power needed to meet the continuous energy demand for the area. GE said that the plant's … Read more

When it comes to power plants, General Electric sees natural gas as solar and wind energy's best friend.

GE today said that it has licensed solar thermal technology from California-based eSolar for use in power plants that use both solar and natural gas. As part of the deal, GE has invested an undisclosed amount in eSolar.

Under the agreement, GE will offer a power plant that incorporates eSolar technology with GE's natural-gas turbines designed specifically for operating with large-scale solar and wind installations. The FlexEfficiency combined cycle natural-gas plant is designed to ramp power generation up and down … Read more