| PG&E Signs Deal for a New Kind of Solar Plant |
| Written by Hank Green | ||
| Tuesday, 03 July 2007 | ||
 Solar power plants have, thus far, been fairly gigantic or extremely tiny. It could be a few square feet on your roof, or a few thousand acres in Nevada. Not really much in between. But the marvelous thing about solar, is that it produces energy at times of peak demand. The sun is beating down full strength as the world switches on its air conditioners at mid-day in the summer. This is the time when electricity demand is highest, when you can charge the most for it, and when brownouts are most likely. Generally, this excess demand is quenched by small expensive and inefficient "peaker" plants, generally burning natural gas or fuel oil. But PG&E, on of California's monster power companies, is installing solar peaker plants designed to produce up to five megawatts during the hottest part of the day. The plants, which are being produced by GreenVolts are a new design. They're composed of tons of small mirrors. Each mirror concentrates the sun's light on a small, ultra-efficient photovoltaic cell. Using less photovoltaic material means cheaper power, and less need for polysilicon, which isn't the most environmentally friendly chemical to produce. Now, this isn't a huge amount of power, it's not going to replace any coal plants. But using solar to produce power during peak demand is just a damn good idea, and I'm glad to see folks utilizing the technology where it's already economically appropriate. Via Green Wombat
Comments
(5)
It's about time that PG+E made up for wh
written by Shu , July 03, 2007
they also seriously need to go green, and cut down on those major future polluter like nuclear stations.... they leave tremendous amount of waste that's costly. And the bottom line is they don't go away, they just get buried.
...
written by David Anderson , July 03, 2007
I met one of the engineers from GreenVolts at a recent bay area networking event. They won the CA cleantech Open entrepreneurial event in the RE category last year (which I also entered, to no avail)... looks like they have a promising spin on technology!
Greenwashing
written by Keiichi , July 05, 2007
Again we sacrifice space and money to produce tiny amounts of 'token' energy from a source that is FAR from perfected. I agree every little bit helps but I can't endorse these solar and wind farms. Wind occupying hundreds of thousands of acres with noisy turbines, solar's exotic materials and production methods have a remarkably inefficient and costly ($$$ and environmental) production quotient. Yet in 20 years when this technology is actually viable we will be tearing down all these useless PR stunt plants. 5MW? Honestly...
I challenge anyone to investigate the carbon output involved in manufacturing photovoltaics, and see how many YEARS you could run a super efficient 50MW gas turbine. We have not perfected solar, we HAVE perfected diesel, gas turbines, LPG TPPs, etc. While I agree development should continue on emergent technologies, I think we should use what we know works. Often times because the methods and techniques behind these new technologies just haven't had the 100 years combustion deveopment and refinement, you'll find the stuff that already exists is more efficient. Give it 20 years and we'll either have very efficient solar or some type of fusion. However, now, we do have nuclear, which will produce 400-1200MW PER REACTOR with no output other than steam and spent nuclear fuel which even then is derived from natural stores of Uranium.
Proud
written by Nick , July 06, 2007
I work for the company, and this is the first I've heard of this. I'm both proud and excited. Every megawatt that we can get for California is needed. As I write this today, it is 111 degrees F. All those air-conditioning units will be running.
I'm glad that the company is under leadership that values the renewable sources of energy it has at its disposal. Currently, PG&E gets a majority of its power from hydroelectric, wind, and thermal sources. The company is also actively seeking sources of power from the kinetic energy in waves and tidal flow.
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written by Matt , July 08, 2007
Concentrating solar and conc. PV have massive potential to provide peak loads for aircon, however building better insulated, shaded and white houses will reduce the need for energy in the first place. Conservation and efficiency must come first, but we will still need renewable energy and lots of it. The benefits of PV is its modular, and could one day come as part of the aircon unit itself removing the need for transmission and losses associated with (~10%)
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