Earlier this year, on October 27th, Ausra commissioned their first solar thermal pilot plant, a 5.0 megawatt facility located in Kimberlina, just north of Bakersfield, California. It is the first solar thermal power facility to be commissioned in California in over 20 years - significantly, the approximately 350 megawatts of solar thermal power installed back [...]

With many millions - if not billions - around the world believing today’s U.S. Presidential election could be the dawn of a new age of peace and prosperity and international cooperation - with even this skeptic among them fervently hoping they’re right - where are we with the dawning of the age of solar energy? How much [...]

There is nothing wrong with encouraging clean, renewable, domestically produced energy.  But California’s proposition 7 “would, if approved, require California utilities to procure half of their power from renewable resources by 2025″ (ref. Ballotpedia).  Currently California’s public utilities are mandated to generate 25% of their electricity by 2025, and this is an ambitious goal.  Just [...]

We’ve reported before on TREC, “The Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation,” an initiative that campaigns for the transmission of clean power from deserts throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.”
The mission of this group, affiliated with the Club of Rome, is to promote the construction of high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines throughout Europe, the [...]

Solar thermal power is considered an important step towards developing large scale sources of clean electricity, but within this sector there are some very distinct applications of the technology.  Bright Source Energy, with offices in Oakland, California, and Tel Aviv, Israel, is building next generation “power tower” solar thermal power plants.

The power tower.
(Photo: Bright Source Energy)

The stated advantages of [...]

Believe it or not, with hundreds upon hundreds of entries - most of them lengthy diatribes filled with quantitative factoids - we have never posted a press release.  Well everything comes in good time, and this is an interesting press release.  Heat transfer and heat storage fluid indeed!  This is the missing link, the central point, [...]

Which of these solutions is more space efficient? 
If you assume 5.0 watts (peak) per square foot for thin film photovoltaic, you end up requiring 4.6 acres per peak megawatt-hour (MWp), about the same as Nevada Solar One’s solar thermal farm (4.7 acres per MWp). Thin film PV panels now have a factory cost of about [...]