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.