By Greentech Lead America: SHEC Energy announced that it
has developed a new technology that reduces the cost of solar power by about 75
per cent. The new technology lowers the cost of the solar field and
significantly increases the efficiency of thermal energy storage. The new
technology makes solar power competitive with the lowest-cost fossil fuels.
Solar power produced by existing systems costs around $0.13
to $0.20 per kilowatt hour (kWh). SHEC Energy’s technology can reduce that cost
to between $0.06 and $0.08 per kWh.
“That’s only slightly more than coal, which is among
the least expensive of the fossil fuels. And it comes without the pollution and
negative health effects you get when burning fossil fuels, and it’s far less
costly than nuclear power, with all its long term radioactive waste
issues,” said Tom Beck, president of SHEC Energy.
SHEC Energy’s new technology produces power by
concentrating sunlight to generate high temperature heat, similar to how a
magnifying glass concentrates sunlight into a point of intense heat in a
typical concentrating solar power system. This heat is then used to boil water
to make steam to turn a turbine, which connected to a generator that makes
electricity.
In typical CSP systems,
there is a high cost for deploying the solar field, which consists of hundreds
or thousands of solar concentrators. This makes CSP plants more expensive than
conventional power plants. And those higher financing costs result in higher
costs for the power generated. SHEC Energy’s CSP system can store heat energy
very cheaply and thereby continue producing power 24 hours a day.
The technology also has applications for amplified photovoltaics for
smaller scale deployments and industrial, village and acreage scale systems for
power and heat.
editor@greentechlead.com