Concentrating Solar Power

The need

   Burning oil for heat to make electricity gives us global warming, 20% of the world’s population moving from coastal flooding,
forced obeisance to the MidEast oil potentates, and no polar bears.
    At 20% conversion efficiency, the 1 TW electric power used by the US could be replaced by a solar concentrator field 75 miles square.
Average US commercial costs for power consumed (2008) Electricity: 10.4˘/kWh Natural gas: 5.0 ˘/kWh of heat Coal: 1.5˘/kWh of heat

The competition (in Arizona location)
Photovoltaic panels:                        27 ˘/kWh electricity
Advanced trough collector:             17 ˘/kWh electricity

Except for having the taxpayer pay for half the cost, investing in solar power is not a rational economic decision, but a political statement. A “go green” statement.

We are changing the game:
delivering heat and electricity at a lower cost than the customer pays now… before he harvests the tax breaks and rebates.

The technology:
A linear Fresnel concentrator is made of many parallel mirror strips, each tilted at the precise angle to reflect a bar of sunlight onto an elevated black receiver tube.
The strips are motorized to rotate together: as the sun moves one degree, each strip rotates precisely ˝ degree, to keep the light bar reflected on the receiver.
This decades-old concept has never been implemented in a way that is simply low cost.
We do that.
By detailed projections, our expected costs for delivered power, without including subsidies and incentives, are:
1.3˘/ kWh of heat, customer-selectable from 200°F to 500°F
11.7˘/kWh of electricity (turbine; 2 football-field array):
2.3˘/ kWh for combined electricity and heat:
cogeneration

The market:
Flat roofs of commercial buildings. 5.5 Billion square feet of available flat, unshaded roof in the US alone.
The solar power is harvested on the roof; electricity goes into the grid; the heat goes right below to power air connditioning, space heating, industrial processes.