Balloon Type Solar Concentrator
Cool Earth Solar has a balloon up in air.No, it isn’t the kind of balloon you would like to play with it, but the kind that concentrates solar power to generate electricity.The company uses an inflatable thin-film balloon(Solar concentrator) that upon inflation focuses sunlight onto photovoltaic cell held at its focal point.Technically speaking this design should produce the maximum amount of power concentration as it focuses sunlight from all directions. A single cell in this concentrator generates about 300 to 400 times the electricity of a cell without a concentrator.So does this mean there would be no more rows and rows of solar panels in the field but just one balloon hovering in the air?
Well Cool Earth is constructing a prototype plant in Livermore to test out different solar designs and get some proof of this technology.This winter, Cool Earth will launch its first commercial-grade power plant. The plant will be relatively small— only 1.4 MW— but Cool Earth plans on launching a full-size plant (10 to 30 MW) by next summer.
Tags: photovoltaic, PV, solar cell, solar concentrator, solar energy, solar panel, thinfilm solarIf you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
March 6, 2009
An ingenious idea. Reading further I noted they are made with inexpensive and free materials compared with the heavy outlay of conventional mirror systems. One to watch in the future.