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Author Topic: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)  (Read 3763 times)

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AGelbert

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Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« on: November 14, 2013, 01:38:14 am »
CSP (Concentrated Solar Power) runs 24/7 at about 570o C. That is the SAME temperature range nuclear power plant steam before it hits the steam turbine. The night time operation is obtained by storing heat in molten salts that provide the steam to the turbines until daylight. The steam turbine in the CSP plants is the same technology as those for nuclear or fossil fuel power plants WITHOUT radionuclide danger or CO2 pollution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMWIgwvbrcM&feature=player_embedded
                                                         
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #1 on: January 23, 2014, 03:08:24 pm »
Latin America Gets Its First Concentrating Solar Plant

SustainableBusiness.com News
 

Construction on Latin America's first concentrating solar plant starts this year, and Abengoa won the $1 billion contract.

 The 110 megawatt solar tower project with molten salt energy storage will be built in Chile on the world's driest desert. Atacama Desert has the highest solar radiation concentration in the world.

 While Abengoa's parabolic concentrating plant in Arizona is more than twice the size, Solana can only store energy for six hours. Chili's plant will be able to produce energy without sunshine for a very impressive 17.5 hours.  ;D

"This makes the technology highly manageable, enabling it to supply electricity in a stable way, 24 hours a day, responding to all periods of electricity demand," says Abengoa.

 The world's largest solar tower plant, Ivanpah, is 377 megawatts and is also in Arizona:
 

 Construction and operation of the project is expected to catalyze regional socio-economic development, creating a large number of direct and indirect jobs.

The Chilean Government and European Union are supporting the project through subsidies in addition to financing from the Inter-American Development Bank, KFW Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau, the Clean Technology Fund and Canadian Fund.

Chile's goal is to get 20% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2025.

Abengoa, the only company that builds and operates solar thermal (concentrating solar) plants using both tower and parabolic trough technologies. It has 1.2 gigawatts of installed capacity worldwide, with another 750 megawatts in the pipeline. Based in Spain, Abengoa recently also had an IPO in the US (Nasdaq: ABGB).

 Abengoa is also very active in cellulosic biofuels.

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/25460
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2014, 02:50:37 pm »
The Solar Technology That Could Solve California’s Water Problem


http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/20/solar-technology-californias-water/
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #4 on: May 01, 2014, 06:52:49 am »

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #5 on: May 01, 2014, 04:06:32 pm »
YES! That's tellin' Em', BRO!
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #6 on: June 07, 2014, 05:05:45 pm »
Energy Department Announces Projects to Advance Cost-Effective Concentrating Solar Power Systems

May 21, 2014 - 12:18pm

The Energy Department today announced $10 million for six new research and development projects that will advance innovative concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies. The projects will develop thermochemical energy storage systems to enable more efficient storage of solar energy while using less storage material, cutting the cost for utility-scale CSP electricity generation as a result. Also today, the Department released a new report highlighting the progress of five major CSP deployment projects that are already producing clean, renewable energy.

“By improving energy storage technologies for concentrating solar power systems, we can enhance our ability to provide clean and reliable solar power, even when the sun is not shining,  ;D said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

Concentrating solar power technologies use mirrors to focus and concentrate sunlight onto a receiver from which a heat transfer fluid carries the intense thermal energy to a power block to generate electricity. The research and development projects announced today will explore and develop novel thermochemical energy storage systems, which could store the sun's energy at high densities and temperatures in the form of chemical bonds. The chemical compounds used to store the chemical energy are later broken down to release energy when needed. Six teams from universities, national laboratories and research institutes, working with industrial partners, will test different chemical processes for CSP thermochemical energy storage that could further advance CSP technology, helping the industry step closer to meeting the SunShot Initiative’s technical and cost targets for CSP and moving the U.S. toward its clean energy future.

The Energy Department’s report, “2014: The Year of Concentrating Solar Power,” focuses on five of the most innovative CSP plants in the world that, in 2014, are expected to be fully operational in the southwestern U.S. as a result of sustained, long-term investments by the Administration and committed solar industry partners. When completed, these projects will provide a combined 1.26 GW of electricity, nearly quadrupling the preexisting CSP capacity in the United States with the potential to power more than 350,000 average American homes. In addition, the five CSP projects illustrate how loan guarantees provided by the Energy Department encouraged private market investment and accelerated the deployment of these technologies at commercial scale.

Broadly, these new Energy Department investments will advance solar energy technologies—driving down costs to make solar more affordable. Learn how the SunShot Initiative is working to develop innovative CSP technologies and make solar energy fully cost competitive with traditional forms of electricity by the end of the decade. For more information on the work of the Loan Programs Office to support the deployment of clean energy technologies, including CSP, at commercial scale, please visit http://energy.gov/lpo/loan-programs-office.

http://energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-projects-advance-cost-effective-concentrating-solar-power
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #7 on: January 23, 2015, 10:28:46 pm »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #8 on: April 18, 2015, 05:01:01 pm »
Quote
Standby is the high risk position for birds.


Solar Flux Solution Brightens Future of Concentrated Solar Power

 Susan Kraemer, Correspondent 
 April 15, 2015  |  13 Comments 



Power tower solar has been under a cloud — in the U.S., anyway — after 321 birds or bats were killed in the first 6 months of operation by flying through solar flux above the Ivanpah Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant, the Google-funded colossus in California’s Mojave desert.

Opponents then greatly exaggerated the numbers, making it a challenge for California regulators to maintain a level-headed approach to permitting future power tower projects.

Regulators do have access to the actual facts as an independent tally and mortality estimate algorithms are typically required for permitting renewable energy. But battling public opinion, even if misinformed, takes courage.

Now there is good news coming from SolarReserve. It has been testing the standby procedures at the Crescent Dunes Solar Project, a 110-megawatt (MW) power tower CSP plant located in the Nevada desert near the town of Tonopah.

The first power tower with storage in the U.S. seems to have solved the problem of avian mortality altogether. However, Crescent Dunes initially experienced the same issues as Ivanpah, but just for one day until plant operators **** the code.

For four or five hours on one day in January, the team focused 3,000 mirrors on one tight donut of air space above the tower for several hours in standby mode, and a reported 115 birds were killed.  :(

When the mirrors are in standby mode — not aimed at the tower receiver to make power — they are just aimed at a point in the sky. Standby is the high risk position for birds. There is a right way and, now they know, a wrong way to aim them during standby.

"As soon as we realized this, we halted testing," CEO Kevin Smith told me this week. "And our engineering team came up with a correction within a day or two."

No More than Four Suns Anywhere


The solution the SolarReserve engineers devised was to extend multiple standby points out across a huge "pancake" area hundreds of meters from the tower "so that no single point in the sky has a concentration of more than four suns.”

"We’ve seen birds fly in and out of the standby positioning and there's no harm at all," Smith said.

As of mid-April, SolarReserve had zero bird deaths for three months since that mid-January day when they discovered the problem and how to solve it.

Solar flux, or concentrated sunlight that is a measurement of light energy radiated in a given area, is not heat. It’s effects matter only when light energy is absorbed by an object that it hits, which during operation is the receiver at the top of the tower. Birds recognize the receiver and the tower as a solid object, so they are unlikely to fly into it.

Only when multiple reflections are not focused on the tower but instead focused in a concentrated area of clear space, there is a risk that birds will fly through that space.

However, by focusing no more than four suns at any one standby point in the sky, the level of solar flux is safer for birds.

“Birds can fly in and out of this zone without injury," said Smith.

Of course, birds can and do fly into most manmade structures — cell phone towers, houses, skysc****rs, industrial buildings, and coal plants and natural gas plants — so the risk of flying into the tower itself can’t be eliminated.

When Heliostats Are Put in Standby


Like computers, the heliostats are asleep at night — just laying flat to avoid wind. Each sunrise, they are woken up and pointed "to a place where we know their exact location" so that when aimed at the receiver for the day, they are traveling from a known position.

However, unlike Ivanpah, during normal operation at Crescent Dunes the heliostats do not need to go into standby after the initial standby position at sunrise due to energy storage.

"In normal operation the mirrors go into standby position in the morning and they are only there for few minutes, after which they are in operation mode and pointed on the receiver all day long," Smith explained. "During testing, we actually have the mirrors in standby for several hours. Even though in normal operation, they’re in standby only for a few minutes at daybreak."

Storage Removes Need for Standby


With storage, the mirrors remain focused on the receiver all day because it is beneficial to keep heating the molten salts. Each cycling through the receiver adds more heat to the molten salts and all excess heat is stored. So moving mirrors to standby during the day would actually reduce its selling point — the dispatchability supplied by storage. So, because it has storage, Crescent Dunes doesn’t need to go into and out of standby during normal operation.

Ivanpah’s design is different. It does not have storage, and it does need to go into standby during the day to protect the turbine power block, which is run on steam by directly boiling water in the receiver with the sun’s energy. If clouds pass, steam can cool to create partial water droplets in the system, which would damage the turbine that generates the electricity. To prevent this, the steam turbine is switched off and the mirrors are put in standby during those lower solar periods throughout the day

Ivanpah owners have now also developed a similar algorithm specific to their system to reduce standby solar flux, and they also use bird, bat and insect deterrents under the oversight of the California Energy Commission.

But the SolarReserve answer to reduce the risks to birds now provides another option to provide clean, safe and reliable energy, which with storage provides solar power even after the sun goes down.

Solar tower developers have been working together to solve this issue once and for all, and SolarReserve’s 4 sun standby solution has been made available to be used by other power tower developers.



http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2015/04/solar-flux-solution-brightens-future-of-concentrated-solar-power?cmpid=SolarNL-Saturday-April18-2015


BEST COMMENT!  ;D



Brian Donovan   
 April 17, 2015 

John: if you want independent monitoring of animal kills for solar, and I agree, then we need it for all power plants, all buildings, all wires, cats, cars, birds....

It may sound like an absurdium argument, but our gov should be keeping track of animal deaths from human activities . Most govs actually do    .

We don't know about the CSP numbers,

Fossil-fueled facilities are 17-34 times more dangerous to birds on a per GWh basis than wind power.
Wind turbines may have killed about 7000 birds, but fossil-fueled stations killed 14.5 million and nuclear 327,000.

http://www.nukefree.org/news/avianmortalityfromwindpower,fossil-fuel,andnuclearelectricity

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/26/wind-farm-bird-deaths-fossil-fuel-nuclear-bird-deaths/

fossils 34 times wind.

Buildings, power lines and cats are estimated to comprise approximately 82 percent of the mortality, vehicles 8 percent, pesticides 7 percent, communication towers 0.5 percent, and wind turbines 0.003 percent.

http://www.dialight.com/Assets%5CApplication_Notes%5CSignaling%5CObstruction%20Lighting%20Bird%20Strike%20Study.pdf

Every year the population of birds roughly doubles, then dies back to about the same as before. The niche for birds is full, they have to die, The environment cannot sustain more.
http://www.biosci.missouri.edu/avianecology/courses/avianecology/readings/Karr_JR_1990.pdf  Survival rates are not different than forest with no civilization. 

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #9 on: May 23, 2015, 05:07:23 pm »
Solar Powered Water Desalination Heats Up in Chile   
 
Solar powered water desalination has the potential to dramatically increase access to fresh water in many arid locations. As a solar powered desalination plant opens in Chile - what are the challenges faced in scaling this technology up to full commercial operation? And what potential exists globally for the technology? Andrew Williams investigates.

For thousands of years, people have used the sun's heat to desalinate water - largely through the use of relatively simple evaporative processes. So called 'direct' solar distillation methods have a long history, with evidence that they were used by ancient Greek mariners and Persian alchemists. Basic solar stills are still used in many small desalination and distillation plants. However, while useful at a very small scale, such methods are of limited use in modern agricultural, industrial and urban environments.

In recent years, an increasing amount of attention has been paid to 'indirect' solar desalination using modern solar photovoltaic technology alongside methods such as reverse osmosis (RO) and Multiple Effect Distillation (MED), which have the potential to operate at a much larger scale.
 

Thinking big   IBM's prototype High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal system uses a large parabolic dish, constructed from a large array of mirror facets, which are attached to a sun tracking system.

According to Dr. Corrado Sommariva, managing director of ILF Consulting Engineers Middle East and president of the International Desalination Association (IDA), a 'large spectrum' of technologies could be classified as “solar powered desalination" - mainly because most traditional state of the art desalination technologies could in theory be coupled with solar powered energy sources.

In the past, some initial research efforts have focused on the viability of solar-thermal powered desalination plants, as well on how to combine sea water reverse osmosis (SWRO) processes with solar photovoltaic technology. However, Sommariva argues that solar powered approaches of this type are 'generally difficult' to manage alongside traditional desalination technologies due to their 'very large energy footprint.'

“This is the reason why there is a new interest towards new technologies that would be able to ensure a lower energy footprint, as this would also facilitate matching with renewable energy sources," he says. In this respect, Sommariva believes that a few technologies are 'particularly interesting,' including Membrane Distillation and Low Temperature Distillation, which he says offer 'great potential for coupling with either solar panels or solar ponds.'


In contrast to the Chilean Solar Power Desalination Plant - which converts sunlight into electrical power that is used for the desalination process - the HCPVT project uses excess heat energy to desalinate water.

“Multiple Effect Distillation (MED) plants have already been coupled with solar ponds," he says. “For SWRO or membrane based technologies, the matching with photovoltaic becomes interesting when the energy footprint goes below the traditional state of the art values and when there is a system that is capable of power import [and] export during the day-night period, as well as during the peak and off peak periods, so that the overall energy balance to the grid remains neutral," he says.

Desert Projects

Such potential is now beginning to come to fruition. In an effort to use the country's sizeable solar energy resource to assist the local agricultural community, membrane-based technologies of the type mentioned by Sommariva have recently been employed in Chile. The demonstration facility, established in mid-March at the Padre Francisco Napolitano agricultural school in the Lluta Valley, uses membrane separation technology to remove salt from water and is wholly powered by an array of solar photovoltaic panels.

The project was established by the Chilean government-supported Fundación Chile, via its Climate Change Fund, and backed by Chile's national Innovation Fund for Competitiveness (FIC).

For many years, farmers in the region, located in the arid Arica y Parinacota Region of the country, have found it difficult to manage crop irrigation - largely because access to water is very low, with any water that is available often being too brackish for agricultural purposes.

According to the project manager, Carolina Cuevas Gutierrez of Fundación Chile, although the plant is currently in an evaluation phase it is already clear that the water generated from the plant has a decreased salinity and boron content. She is confident will enable “an increase in quality and diversity of crops in the region".

In a press statement, Fundación Chile said that the plant is “simple in its construction and operation" and costs only US$210,000 (CLP 100 million) to build.

Over the coming months the plant's operations will be closely monitored. A market study and business model will be created - with the ultimate aim being to commercialise the technology for use at other locations across northern Chile.

“The benefit lies not only in the new water technology, but also the low energy consumption," Gutierrez. “As we know, energy represents the biggest cost in any technology. Using today's solar technology, we can produce excellent quality water, and the next step is to apply this to further agricultural production."

Prof. André Bernard, head of the Institute for Micro- and Nanotechnology (MNT) at the Interstate University of Applied Sciences Buchs (NTB) in Switzerland, adds: “This is good news. Clean drinking water is a very precious good – and all efforts to produce it where needed is key to a self-supporting micro-economy."

Elsewhere, an IDA and ILF-led energy task force is also supporting a MASDAR initiative, which aims to install up to five pilot solar-powered desalination plants in the Emirates of Abu Dhabi. The plan is for these facilities to use the type of new desalination technologies that Sommariva describes as having a low energy footprint, and which he is confident can therefore 'be easily matched with renewable energy sources.'

“Among various renewable sources, we are contemplating mainly solar and geothermal. Recently a MED plant driven by an enhanced solar pond has been commissioned in Fujairah. Saudi Arabia has [also] launched a massive program for renewable driven desalination in the Al Khafji area," he says. “In general there are very interesting movements that hopefully will drive the new generation of low energy desalination plant(s)," he adds.


In the IBM HCPVT system, instead of heating a building, the produced 90o Celsius water will be used to heat salty water that is passed through a porous membrane distillation system where it is vaporized and desalinated.

IBM Research

In another development, IBM Research is currently heading up a research project investigating the use of heat from a concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) system to drive a membrane distillation (MD) desalination process.

The prototype High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system uses a large parabolic dish, constructed from a large array of mirror facets, which are attached to a sun tracking system. This tracking system positions the dish at the optimum angle to capture solar radiation, which then reflects off the mirrors onto several microchannel-liquid cooled receivers with triple junction photovoltaic chips. To capture the medium grade heat IBM scientists and engineers have made use of technology initially developed for water-cooled high performance computers. Here water is used to absorb heat from the processor chips, which is then used to provide space heating for IBM facilities.

In the HCPVT system, instead of heating a building, the 90° Celsius water will be used to heat salty water that is passed through a porous membrane distillation system where it is vaporized and desalinated. IBM estimates that such a system could provide 30-40 litres of drinkable water per square meter of receiver area per day, while still generating electricity with a more than 25% yield, or two kilowatt hours per day.

According to Bruno Michel, manager - Advanced Thermal Packaging at IBM Research, the reason for choosing a HCPVT system is that it provides 80-90° C waste heat - a temperature level which matches exactly 'with the required temperature for an optimal yield of an MD system.'

“Water evaporates at reduced pressure through the pores of a membrane, like the well known GoreTex membrane, that allows steam to pass but not water," says Michel. “The steam then condenses on a condensation foil that transfers the heat to the next effect. This multi-effect approach maximizes the yield for the distillation process," he adds.

IBM's partners, Airlight Energy, will develop this part of the system using low cost concrete and simple pressurized metalized plastic foils - with ETH Zurich assuming responsibility for the development of the solar concentrating optics. Under the auspices of the project, prototype HCPVT systems will be built in Zurich, Biasca and Rueschlikon over the next 36 months.

“The water desalination is already being prototyped here at the lab in Rueschlikon using a small photovoltaic dish we have on the roof," says Michel. Meanwhile, Bernard is keen to stress that, in contrast to the Chilean Solar Power Desalination Plant - which converts sunlight into electrical power that is used for the desalination process - the HCPVT project uses excess heat energy to desalinate water.

“The IBM-Airlight HCPVT-system will, however, employ larger area solar collectors and concentrators that are less suitable for small-scale plants that fit into a 'private garden,'" he says.

The Scale Up Challenge

Although projects of the type outlined here show a great deal of promise, a number of hurdles must still be overcome before the various types of solar powered desalination technology can reach large-scale commercialisation. For Sommariva, the main problem encountered so far relates to “bridging the gap between research and development and commercialisation of these concepts". In his view, the main challenge is that these concepts need time and operational feedback before they will be able to compete with state of the art technology “in terms of robustness, reliability and maintainability".


Transparent technology: the Lluta Valley project uses membrane separation technology to remove salt from the water, all powered by solar photovoltaic panels

“Ultimately the bankability of these concepts becomes problematic. An important step ahead is [to undertake] a continuous and rigorous piloting program which is aimed at commercialisation," he says.

However, to ensure that these concepts are 'induced adequately' in the market, Sommariva also argues that the first attempts at commercialisation need to be made within an 'initially restricted market' where renewable desalination projects of this type 'can compete in a restricted arena without being forced to compete with the large IWP-IWPP projects involving traditional technologies.'


The US$210,000 plant will be monitored over the coming months with aim to fully commercialise the technology across other locations in Northern Chile

“In this way, the premises for technology development and industrial implementation based on purely commercial criteria can be created," he says.

Michel adds that the main challenges for technologies of the type developed in the HCPVT project are maturization and cost - and he stresses that the technology is new and “needs to catch up with established technologies".

“Despite the fast track development we have to pay attention to select low-cost components," he says. “The selected technologies, micro-channel cooled multichip receivers and inflated optics with injection moulded concrete elements are our winning bets to overcome the challenges," he says.


IBM's partners, Airlight Energy, will develop part of the system using low cost concrete and simple pressurized metalized plastic foils - with ETH Zurich assuming responsibility for the development of the solar concentrating optics.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Zäch, project leader for the HCPVT System project at NTB, believes that an important factor in the ongoing commercial viability of plants such as those established in Chile is the availability of cost-efficient solar cells, along with smart low-cost tracking systems. “Another aspect is an energy-conservative desalination process that can be driven using the solar power. Knowing the energy needed for the desired desalination output helps to configure the solar cells correctly and finding the appropriate PV technology," he says.

Future Prospects

Looking ahead, Sommariva hopes that indirect solar powered desalination will become increasingly viable “all over the world". However, he points out that in locations such as the Middle East energy costs are still often 'unrealistic' - a situation which he argues 'clearly does not help in driving desalination towards efficiency or towards renewable solutions.'

“This will change in the future as the cost of water will be more and more dependent on the cost of energy," he says. Michel also envisions the HCPVT system providing sustainable energy and potable water to locations around the world, including southern Europe, Africa, the Arabian peninsula, the south-western part of the United States, South America and Australia. He points out that remote tourism locations are also an 'interesting market,' particularly resorts on small islands, such as the Maldives, Seychelles and Mauritius, “since conventional systems require separate units, with consequent loss in efficiency and increased cost".

In the long run, Bernard is confident that the prospect of becoming independent from global clean water suppliers 'will help poorer regions to develop and prosper quicker' and at the same time 'increase their knowledge in technology.'

“This is important for a region and a country in general. But of course solar-driven desalination is not the golden egg for all regions, since it dependent on high insolation ," he says.

Author's note: Andrew Williams is a freelance correspondent for WWi magazine. For more information, email: tomf@pennwell.com.

http://www.waterworld.com/articles/wwi/print/volume-28/issue-3/regional-spotlight-latin-america/solar-powered-water-desalination-heats.html

Agelbert NOTE:
With this fossil fuel FREE technology, Countries like Namibia and Egypt, along with any country with large desert areas next to the ocean (with high insolation) could be greened, as well as enjoy a huge GDP boost from selling sea salt, a product in demand worldwide.

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #10 on: May 23, 2015, 05:41:27 pm »

Equipped with an array of multi-junction photovoltaic chips, each of the IBM "sunflowers" can supply the energy needs of several homes (Image: Airlight Energy/dsolar)

By Colin Jeffrey

October 8, 2014

IBM "sunflowers" to supply off-grid energy, water, and cooling


The video below shows the prototype system in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVB9_3IKIAE&feature=player_embedded

Looking rather like a 10-meter (33 ft) tall sunflower, IBM's High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system concentrates the sun’s radiation over 2,000 times on a single point and then transforms 80 percent of that into usable energy. Using a number of liquid-cooled microchannel receivers, each equipped with an array of multi-junction photovoltaic chips, each HCPVT can produce enough power, water, and cooling to supply several homes.

(All pictures are at link)
The receiver with its triple-junction PV cells (Photo: IBM) 
IBM scientist Dr. Bruno Michel holds the receiver design package (Photo: IBM) 
HCPVT being tested at Airlight (Photo: Airlight Energy/dsolar) 

Swiss-based supplier of solar power technology, Airlight Energy, has partnered with IBM Research to utilize IBM's direct wam-water cooling design (adapted from use in IBM’s SuperMUC supercomputer), water adsorption technologies, and leverage IBM’s past work with multi-chip solar receivers developed in a collaboration between IBM and the Egypt Nanotechnology Research Center, to develop and produce the system.

Using a 40-sq-m (430.5-sq-ft) parabolic dish coated with 36 plastic foil elliptic mirrors just 0.2 mm thick, the HCPVT system prototype concentrates the sun’s radiation onto a number of liquid-cooled receivers, each of which contains an array of 1-cm2 (0.39 in2) chips that each generate "up to 57 watts of electrical power when operating during a typical sunny day," combining to produce 12 kW of electrical power and 20 kW of heat.

Micro-structured conduits pump treated water around these receivers to carry away excess heat at a rate that is claimed to be 10 times more effective than passive air cooling. Although the water is still subsequently heated to around 85-90° C (183-194° F), the removal of heat from the chips keeps them at a relatively cool safe operating temperature of around 105° C (221° F). Without this cooling, the concentrated energy of the sun would see the chips reach temperatures of over 1,500° C (2,732° F).

"The direct cooling technology with very small pumping power used to cool the photovoltaic chips with water is inspired by the hierarchical branched blood supply system of the human body," said Dr. Bruno Michel, manager, advanced thermal packaging at IBM Research.

The HCPVT system can also be adapted to use the cooling system to provide drinkable water and air conditioning from the hot water output produced. Salt water is passed through the heating conduits before being run through a permeable membrane distillation system, where it is then evaporated and desalinated. To produce cool air for the home, the waste heat can be run through an adsorption chiller, which is an evaporator/condenser heat exchanger that uses water, rather than other chemicals, as the refrigerant medium.

The creators claim that this system adaptation could provide up to 40 liters (10 gallons) of drinkable water per square meter of receiver area per day, with a large, multi-dish installation theoretically able to provide enough water for an entire small town.

All of these factors, – waste energy used for distillation and air-conditioning combined with a 25 percent yield on solar power – along with the setup's sun tracking system that continuously positions the dish at the best angle throughout the day, combine to produce the claimed 80 percent energy efficiency. 


Other sunflower-type heliostats exist, such as those that redirect sunlight in a residential situation or – at the other end of the scale – in industrial applications that produce many megawatts of power. The HCPVT system, however, could be considered more of a super-efficient, multi-house power plant where the claimed efficacy of the sunflower design shows its worth as a medium-scale solution to off-grid sustainable power needs.

Estimations on the operating lifetime for the HCPVT system are around 60 years with adequate maintenance, including replacing the shielding foil and the elliptic mirrors every 10 to 15 years (contingent on environmental conditions) and the PV cells, which will require replacement at the end of their operational life of approximately 25 years.

Preliminary versions of the HCPVT system will be offered with "non-optimized predecessor" (i.e. "basic") distillation and adsorption cooling systems, with optimized desalination and adsorption cooling requiring an extra two to three years to develop and bring to market.

As a gesture to bring such technology to markets unable to afford to buy their own system, Airlight and IBM will also donate a HCPVT system to two communities via competitive application. Each of the successful communities will be awarded a prototype HCPVT system from Airlight Energy and be eligible for no-cost set up and adaptation support from IBM Corporate Service Corps.

Applications from communities will be open sometime in 2015 and the winners will be announced in December 2015, with installations beginning in 2016. A fully commercial HCPVT system is expected to be launched to market sometime in 2017.

Sources: IBM, Airlight Energy
http://www.gizmag.com/ibm-sunflower-hcpvt-pv-thermal-solar-concentrator/33989/


Look ma, no fossil fuels! 
 
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #11 on: August 07, 2015, 09:51:48 pm »
1 GW Solar Sunlight-to-Steam Breakthrough for CSP   

 
August 6, 2015  By Susan Kraemer, Correspondent
 
In the South Oman oilfields, a glass-encased Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) project the size of an average nuclear plant has broken a new record for solar.

After proving its technology in a 7 MW demo, which beat its promised energy output every month for a couple of years; Glasspoint has landed a deal to build Miraah, a gigantic 1 GW solar Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) project for Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) at Amal West oil field.

At an astonishing 1,021 megawatts, Miraah is almost three times the capacity of Ivanpah, which at 377 MW is currently the world's largest CSP project delivering electricity.  :o   ;D


Yet not only will Miraar (mirror in Arabic) produce steam at gigantic scale, but it does so at much lower cost than CSP and about half the cost of gas. The 1 GW project will cost a mere $600 million.

Read all the details about this exciting breakthrough at the link below:

 

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/08/1-gw-solar-sunlight-to-steam-breakthrough-for-csp.html
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #12 on: April 15, 2016, 03:35:01 pm »

Solar Thermal Plant Basics

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #13 on: May 10, 2016, 10:27:55 pm »
Stalled in the U.S., Solar Thermal Power Finds a New Market in China

SolarReserve says it will work with the world’s largest coal supplier to help reduce China’s dependence on fossil fuels, but details are still murky.
by Richard Martin
 May 9, 2016

Seeing its prospects falter in the United States, solar thermal project developer SolarReserve is teaming up with the world’s largest coal provider to find better prospects for the technology in China.

The company’s deal with Shenhua Group, which calls for 1,000 megawatts of solar capacity to be developed and built in the coming years, could be an important step forward in China’s effort to reduce its dependence on coal-fired power plants for electricity.

Also known as concentrated solar power, solar thermal plants use thousands of mirrors to focus the sun’s rays on a central tower, heating a liquid to make steam to produce electricity. The motorized mirrors, known as heliostats, track the sun’s path over the course of the day. Once touted as the next generation of solar power, the technology has largely stalled in the U.S., where environmentalists’ concerns over bird deaths (estimates of which have been shown in recent studies to be overstated) and the high cost of the electricity produced have effectively halted new projects (see “Ivanpah’s Problems Could Signal the End of Concentrated Solar in the U.S.”).

Quote
In energy-hungry countries like China that lack access to abundant low-cost natural gas, however, solar thermal evidently still has a future    .

The Chinese government has said it plans to develop 10,000 megawatts of solar thermal capacity by 2020 (there are 16 solar thermal plants planned or under construction in China today, according to CSP World, a website that focuses on solar thermal power; only a handful of pilot plants, each one megawatt or less in size, are operating). The SolarReserve system is especially attractive to Chinese operators because it uses molten salt, heated to over 1,000 °F by the concentrated rays of the sun, as an energy storage medium. That allows solar thermal plants to continue supplying power when intermittent forms of renewable power, such as conventional solar and wind, cannot. The molten salt can also absorb and store excess energy from the power grid for later release.

China’s renewable energy market has been “dominated by solar PV and wind,” says SolarReserve CEO Kevin Smith. “But they’ve realized those are only part of the solution.”

Demand for renewable energy in China is certainly growing; under the Paris climate accord the country aims to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. But coal still supplies more than 60 percent of the country’s electricity, and the future of a sophisticated, relatively high-priced form of power generation such as solar thermal in a country where millions of homes were until recently still heated with coal braziers is far from certain.

The Shenhua agreement is, for the moment, unspecific: the number and size of the individual projects that will make up the 1,000-megawatt total have not been determined, and SolarReserve declines to comment on the price of the megawatt-hours those projects will provide. The installations will be located in China’s arid interior, which means that large transmission lines will be required to send the electricity to the big cities of the coast. But “the robust solar resource and high altitudes” of the country’s hinterlands, says SolarReserve’s senior vice president of development Tom Georgis, “are ideal” for its molten salt tower technology.

Quote
More ideal, it seems, than the United States. Other international projects are under way in Chile, South Africa, and Israel, from both SolarReserve and solar thermal rival BrightSource Energy. A promising technology that has stumbled in the U.S. may yet find a new way forward overseas.   

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601391/stalled-in-the-us-solar-thermal-power-finds-a-new-market-in-china/
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AGelbert

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Re: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
« Reply #14 on: May 23, 2016, 07:14:36 pm »
Agelbert NOTE: This one year old article already showed the way to heliostat environmentally sound solutions AND explained how the fossil fuelers try to condemn heliostats:
Quote
Power tower solar has been under a cloud — in the U.S., anyway — after 321 birds or bats were killed in the first 6 months of operation by flying through solar flux above the Ivanpah Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant, the Google-funded colossus in California’s Mojave desert.

Opponents  then greatly exaggerated the numbers, making it a challenge for California regulators to maintain a level-headed approach to permitting future power tower projects.


Standby is the high risk position for birds.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2015/04/solar-flux-solution-brightens-future-of-concentrated-solar-power?cmpid=SolarNL-Saturday-April18-2015

SOME FACTS the fossil fuelers IGNORE: Fossil-fueled facilities are 17-34 times more dangerous to birds on a per GWh basis than wind power. Heliostats, LESS dangerous than wind power to birds,  have caused the deaths of hundreds of birds and wind turbines may have killed about 7000 birds, but fossil-fueled stations killed 14.5 million and nuclear 327,000.

http://www.nukefree.org/news/avianmortalityfromwindpower,fossil-fuel,andnuclearelectricity

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/11/26/wind-farm-bird-deaths-fossil-fuel-nuclear-bird-deaths/

Quote
fossils 34 times wind.

Buildings, power lines and cats are estimated to comprise approximately 82 percent of the mortality, vehicles 8 percent, pesticides 7 percent, communication towers 0.5 percent, and wind turbines 0.003 percent.


http://www.dialight.com/Assets%5CApplication_Notes%5CSignaling%5CObstruction%20Lighting%20Bird%20Strike%20Study.pdf

Here is an objective scientific study of Heliostat technology. They would not have been built in the first place if they weren't MORE cost effective than polluting fossil fuel power plants and dirty energy drilling operations. Anyone claiming otherwise is ignorant or energy math challenged.

State of the Art in Heliostats and Definition of Specifications

STAGE-STE Project

SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL ALLIANCE FOR GUARANTEEING THE EUROPEAN EXCELLENCE IN CONCENTRATING SOLAR THERMAL ENERGY
Grant agreement number: 609837
Start date of project: 01/02/2014
Duration of project:48 months
WP12 – Task 1.1
Deliverable 12.1
Due date:07/2014
Submitted 12/2014
File name: STAGESTE_Deliverable_12_1_Draft
Partner responsible CIEMAT, IK4-TKN, CENER
Person responsible F. Téllez, C. Villasante, M. Burisch
Author(s) /Contributions:F. Téllez (CIEMAT); M. Burisch (CENER); Villasente (IK4-TKN); M. Sánchez (CENER); C. Sansom, P. Kirby, P. Turner (CRANFIELD); C. Caliot, A. Ferriere (CNRS); C A. Bonanos, C. Papanicolas, A Montenon (CYI); R.Monterreal (CIEMAT); J.Fernández (CIEMAT)
Reviewed by:  M. Collares
Dissemination Level PU


List of content
Executive Summary ... 3
1 Introduction ... 5
2 Heliostat Optional Designs ... 7
2.1. Heliostat Components ... 11
2.2. Reflecting Module ... 14
2.3. Foundation ... 16
2.4. Structure ... 17
2.5. Drive Mechanism ... 19
2.6. Heliostat Control ... 23
2.7. Canting ... 24
3 Heliostat Deployment Worldwide................................................................................................... 27
4 Heliostat’s Cost ... 39
4.1. Cost Reduction Potential ... 41
5 Heliostat Functional Specifications ................................................................................................ 48
5.1. Heliostat Typical Specifications ................................................................................................. 48
5.2. Minimal Functional Specifications for Small Heliostat ............................................................... 53
6 References / Bibliography ... 57


SNIPPET 1:   

Quote
The optimum heliostat size — if in fact one exists — will be better understood as the power tower industry continues to deploy and operate more systems. Power tower industry is forced at least by market and commercial constrains to design and produce optimum (cost-effective) heliostats, in the near, medium term to significantly reduce capital cost of CSP becoming more and more competitive in the energy market, CR technologies have the potential of leading Solar Power through effective cost reduction to competitiveness.

Starting with initial heliostat efforts in the early 1970s up to today, there has been a general tendency to increase the heliostat size from about 12 m2 to approximately 150-200 m2, with several counter-examples of much smaller heliostats, primarily in the past several years. So that, currently, there is no consensus among CR-CSP developers regarding the optimum size of a heliostat.

The tendency to favor larger heliostats during this period has apparently been based more in local experiences while building and testing the first prototypes than in a holistic analysis of the problem, leaving aside the benefits of mass production, lean manufacturing processes in terms of quality control and cost reduction both demanded by CR technologies in part on the assumed advantages of “economies of scale”.

An expected benefit with larger heliostats was that the fixed cost of some components that are needed per each unit of heliostat could be spread over a larger area, thus reducing the specific cost per unit area.

Other factors may have played a role in this general trend, such as availability of commercial drive units potentially offering high performance and low cost, or relaxing design criteria to achieve lower costs by increasing the reflector area to the maximum allowable for a given drive unit. In efforts to reduce the cost of the drive, a number of customized drive products have been developed by companies such as Sener [Lata2010], Flender Siemens [Siemens2008, Teufel2008, Kunert2009], Winsmith [Kolb2007, Winsmith2003] and Cone Drive [ConeDrive2013].

For smaller heliostats, the cost of the control and communication system also becomes an important cost driver favoring larger heliostats.


SNIPPET 2:

Quote

Table 3: Advantages and drawbacks appearing when heliostat size is varying.


Heliostat Increasing size


PROs
   
Increasing Benefit from the economics of enlargement

Reducing the number of heliostat leads to reducing the cost by:

taking as much advantage as possible from expensive high-tech components mainly high precision tracking systems,

Lowering the specific operation and maintenance costs   


CONs               

Increase of torques from wind loads, resulting in higher specific weight and higher specific drive power. Thus the level of demand in the technical specifications of the heliostat’s tracking system increases with the size.

On-site heliostat assembly is difficult (facilities not well-equipped, not easily automated and time consuming processes are involved such as canting);

Canting accuracy becomes critical for a large heliostat. (For large heliostat fields where last row of heliostats could be placed at several kilometers from the solar tower, to be able to concentrate, large area heliostat need to keep their theoretical curvature).

Land use might be worse with large heliostats and the long distance heliostats provide worse optical efficiency.

Strong limitations when applying mass productions and lean manufacturing processes

SNIPPET 3:

Quote
There are now 226,852 heliostats in operation (Table 5) with a total mirror surface of about 3.3 millions of square meters. The figures for the heliostats to be implemented in the plants (and/or facilities) under construction are very similar: about 238,000 heliostats with a total surface of about 2 million square meters.

The total number of heliostats by adding the plants under development and planned to the operational and under construction plants, amounts to 835,838 heliostat units with a total mirror surface of about 17 million square meters.

https://www.stage-ste.eu/deliverables/STAGE_STE_Deliverable_12_1.pdf

I REPEAT, Heliostats would not have been built in the first place if they weren't MORE cost effective than polluting fossil fuel power plants and dirty energy drilling operations.

The FACT that they are building so many MORE of them is evidence that they DO produce cheaper Electricity than polluting energy sources. Anyone claiming otherwise is ignorant or energy math challenged.



Renewable energy=                                =Fossil Fuelers
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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