Seems like every day I hear of a new, latest and greatest, energy solution that is going to revolutionize the way we get power. The previous blog entry discussed the “Bloom Box” and on site distributed energy. I personally feel that distributed energy is the way to go. But so far no one technology has been able to dethrone big bad coal. While the Bloom box is designed to power 1-4 homes, we also need systems that can power a thousand homes.

Another technology that has been making big, fix-it-all, headlines is Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology. The concept is very sound and has been around for quite awhile. It has been tried before with limited success (The Solar Project),  and is being prepared for wider deployment. The essential concept is to stuff a bunch a mirrors (heliostats) out in a desert around a central tower. The mirrors reflect the sun’s energy back onto the tower so that you get a concentration of energy. The area of the tower that accepts all the sun rays is the receiver. These receivers, depending on their technology, can reach pretty high temperatures, sometimes upwards of 1000°F. The more heat the receiver gets, the more energy is available for use. That heat is used to boil water, producing steam that runs a turbine generator.

There are quite a few big names that are backing this technology. Google just announced a breakthrough in heliostat technology that will greatly increase the amount of reflected energy a mirror can output. Google has also funded, through the firm IdeaLab, millions and millions of dollars into a company called eSolar. eSolar’s plan is to make scalable CSP “farms” that harvest the sun. BrightSource is another big player in the field. They just received the ok for a 1.4 billion dollar loan from the federal government to build a CSP plant in the Mojave desert. The technology is ready for the big time, it just needs deployed, standardized, and mass produced to bring down costs.

So the big questions are, how do we use all this heat energy in an efficient manner, and what about when the sun isn’t shining? Hundreds or maybe even thousands of very bright scientists are working on these issues, and they will find a solution. Some solutions involve higher receiver temperatures, and some involve using materials with a high heat storage capacity to store the energy for when it is needed. Both of these solutions will require insulation to keep that energy from dissipating.

So you are dealing with really high temperatures, and you want to store that heat energy in an efficient manner?  Thermal insulating boards and shapes such as, Gemcolite are available for temperatures up to 3000°F, and its low thermal conductivity provides an efficient solution to help store that heat energy.

Hopefully, in the not too far future, CSP plants and other technologies will be able to reduce our dependency on limited supply, carbon based, power sources, and place the United States at the forefront of a new energy economy.
You can read more about eSolar, BrightSource and Refractory Specialties at the links below.

eSolar
BrightSource
Refractory Specialties

Dan Worley, Alternative Energy Technologist
Refractory Blog