These days it seems like solar power is moving leaps and bounds toward a truly viable and scalable alternative energy source. Black silicon, solar tubes, and fusing nanotechnology with solar present the potential for solar energy to be immense. The solar company SkyFuel has come up with a way to lower the cost of parabolic troughs by 35% by using a new silvered-polymer film instead of the traditional heavy glass mirrors. This makes the concentrators less expensive and more durable since the film will be backed by sheets of aluminum and will not shatter.
SkyFuel estimates that it can deliver electricity below the concentrating solar power benchmark of 15 cents per kilowatt-hour at a profit. That’s the price of other solar thermal technologies, but still more than a natural gas or coal power plant.
The company expects to have a small installation of its SkyFuel system–between 2 to 10 megawatts in size–in the next year and larger installations after the initial pilots.
The company is already working on the second generation product that will include storage. It probably won’t be commercially available for at least a few years, Huntington said. Rather than heat up oil or hot water, the parabolic troughs will heat up tubes of molten salt. That salt can be stored to make electricity even after the sun goes down.
via CNET
Tags: skyfuel, solar, solar energy
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