A joined U.S.-Israeli team is testing a new solar technology plant to cut the cost of energy produced by the sun. An Israeli company and its American parent “Bright Source Energy” plan to use this Israeli solar array in Israel’s Negev desert to test new technology for three new solar plants under construction in California. The new technology uses fields of computer guided flat mirrors called heliostats to track the sun and focus its raze on a boiler, at the top of a 200 foot tower.
Water inside the boiler turns to steam which powers a turbine and produces electricity. The steam is than captured and cooled naturally so the water can be reused. The test plant does not have a turbine to create electricity but engineers can measure the pressure and temperature of the steam to estimate how much energy the towers will produce.
Harnessing the suns raze has proved expensive and often inefficient. Bright Source CEO John Woolard estimates that the new technology could cut the cost associated with solar energy by 30 to 50 percent.
“By operating at higher temperature and higher pressure than it’s been done before you can cost down dramatically. So it’s all about higher efficiency driving lower cost and that can help make solar thermal compete directly with fossil fuels” - John Woolard
Solar tower technology is not a new idea. Bright Source’s effort is just one of several solar technologies currently being tested around the world. All companies developing alternate technologies face big hurdles related to cost and efficiency. In the United States alone government agencies are testing several different types of solar technology in an effort to find ones that are the most cost and energy efficient. Bright Source’s concept is in the final testing stage. Results from the experimental facility are fractions of the size of the commercial plants.
The plan is to complete full sized facilities in California’s Mojave desert by 2011.
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