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The Sky's The Limit For Solar Power Balloon
Cool Earth have invented a solar power balloon that collects concentrated solar energy that is many times more powerful than has been collected before. California-based Cool Earth Solar, are claiming the ability to cheaply harvest solar energy not just in kilowatts or megawatts, but those big, lovely gigawatts of power. Instead of using flat solar panels, Cool Earth Solar uses what is basically a large balloon as a concentrator. This balloon is about 8 feet tall and is made of thin plastic film. It has a transparent upper hemisphere and reflective lower hemisphere that forms a shape that naturally focuses sunlight on a photovoltaic cell. The beauty of this is that it is a simple idea and needs no new technology. But it will generate 300-400 times the electricity that same cell could produce without the concentrator. Now that IS efficiency! So efficient in fact that they claim that they can generate electricity as cheaply as, or more cheaply than, natural gas. And they expect to pass coal soon.
Cool Earth Solar is currently working on a 1.5-million watt plant in Tracy, California. And within a year’s time, they hope to start building standardized 10 to 30 megawatt plants thus creating hundreds of megawatts of electricity every year. They will then be able to sell the power directly to utility companies. Then their solar power balloon solar power balloon idea will really begin to take off. To return to our solar power news page. To return to our Total Solar Energy home page.
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