For some reason, this month seems to be Hawaii's turn with energy news. Earlier this month, Hawaii's Governor signed a bill requiring all new homes to be equipped with solar water heaters, and the city of Honolulu is installing a system to use sea-water and deep-ocean temperature for cooling downtown buildings. But there's still more.

Sopogy, Inc., a Hawaii-based solar energy company has announced the groundbreaking for a new solar farm making use of their MicroCSP. MicroCSP is a smaller version of a parabolic solar concentrator. While the smaller units may lose some efficiency, they are also less susceptible to damage from storms and high winds, something that is more of a problem for an island in the ocean than for the desert southwest. Sopogy MicroCSP collectors are specifically designed to withstand a more difficult setting like Hawaii. Keahole Solar Power will be a solar energy farm located at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii, and can eventually be scaled up to 1 megawatt of production.

Solar thermal generation can serve in cogeneration systems alongside other energy sources (both conventional and renewable), making it less problematic for peak demand needs and load balancing. Other methods of producing steam to run electricity generating turbines can be interconnected, so that a plant's generating capacity is less affected by night or overcast conditions.

Via Sopogy, Inc. Press release, Sopogy Power Generation (PDF)

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