www.SustainableVirtualBiz.com Internet Marketing Social Media Blog SEO Advertise
Sustainable Virtual Biz Reports Google Solar Thermal Energy - Google.org’s research on Renewable Energy, the development of a new concentrating mirrors for solar thermal power plants, reducing costs of solar thermal plants in half.
Solar thermal plants rely on mirrors to focus sunlight onto a tower carrying a substance that is used to make steam. Steam is then collected and used to run a turbine to generate electricity.
Google has been looking at unusual materials for the mirror’s reflective surface and the substrate on which the mirror is mounted. The company is already discussing the new technology with Brightsource Energy, which has recently got $1.4 billion in loan guarantees for the world’s largest solar thermal power plant.
The company's engineers have been focused on solar thermal technology, in which the sun's energy is used to heat up a substance that produces steam to turn a turbine. Mirrors focus the sun's rays on the heated substance. http://www.sustainablevirtualbiz.com
Bill Weihl, Google's green enery chief said it is looking to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the sun, by at least a factor of two, "ideally a factor of three or four."
"Typically what we're seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost," Weihl said. "So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It's a lot of money." That works out to 12 to 18 cents a kilowatt hour.
More Info: http://www.sustainablevirtualbiz.com
Photo:
http://www.prlog.org/
