Cheap, off-the-shelf parts and a clever design make Skyline Solar's reflective aluminum troughs a contender in the race to make solar ubiquitous
Posted 05.04.2009 at 1:52 pm
9 Comments
Solar Panels
Ordinary solar panels are inefficient, reflecting nearly a third of incoming sunlight. A new process based on the structure of moth eyes will bring that number down to less than two percent.
Kevin Thoule
The next frontier in traditional solar panels is concentrators - devices, usually lenses, that concentrate solar power onto the most expensive part of a solar panel - the silicon. Skyline Solar's "solar trough" design concentrates sunlight without using expensive lenses or complicated robotic armatures for tracking the sun as it crosses the sky.
The entire system is built from commodity parts in an effort to make it cheap and scalable – the ultimate goal being 'grid parity,' or a system that is competitive with fossil fuels as a means of generating electricity. That's why the Department of Energy gave Skyline a $3 million grant as part of its Solar Energy Technologies Program. (Investors have plunked down another $25 million.)
Proponents of concentration photovoltaics have long argued that the technology has the potential to slash the cost of solar power, but until now, it has represented an incremental cost savings at best. Indeed, many industry observers believe that thin film solar, a competing technology, is the one to watch.
Skyline Solar's approach is straightforward and therefore, potentially, a winner. Long, curved, shiny panels of aluminum concentrate the sun's energy onto custom-built strips of solar photovoltaics - the same stuff that is on conventional solar panels. There are no lenses, and the troughs only have to rotate along a single axis in order to track the sun, in contrast to competing systems that require more complicated (and less reliable) two-axis tracking to keep flat panels always facing directly into the sun.
Skyline Solar has already put up its first demonstration plant, in San Jose, California, for Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. The company claims that the technology is suitable for any city that gets at least as much sunshine as New York City, and plants based on it are economical at the 100 kilowatt to 100 megawatt range of power production. By comparison, a smallish coal-fired power plant would be about 500 megawatts, and most solar PV plants top out at a hundred or so kilowatts.
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The Environment, eco tech, energy, silicon, solar panels, solar power"What we are developing is a linear concentrator at the core," said Skyline CEO Bob MacDonald at an early reveal of the technology. "It’s a quite straightforward design that takes a reflective optical sheet and forms it into a parabolic section that focuses the light onto a straight line.... So, it’s essentially a silicon module that’s enclosed by an aluminum reflector."
Only time will tell who will win the race to make solar energy competitive with fossil fuels for electricity production, and all forms of solar photovoltaics are starting the race at the back of the pack. Concentrated solar power, wind turbines and even geothermal power all produce power at a significantly lower cost.
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Great idea. I wanted to see this happen for some time now.
^_^
I read this article 10 years ago, and will probably read it again in ten years as well. Same goes for supersonic air travel and wing shaped jumbo jets. What percentage of these articles are just recycled?
VULVOX inc.s breakthrough collectors will be able to generate electricity with 50% efficiency or greater.
The dual solar thermal-photovoltaic system will wrest approximately twice as much power from an area as regular solar thermal or photovoltaic energy systems. Our technology can be used to retrofit existing parabolic troughs and solar power towers to increase their efficiency. Besides applications at utility scale solar power plants that are contributing electricity to the California power grid, they will also have an important advantage in the upcoming industry of rooftop solar power. Apartment buildings, skyscrapers and industrial buildings all have flat roofs that can accommodate our solar power systems and the greater efficiency of dual thermal-photovoltaic energy generation systems will make it cost competitive with other generation systems.
The Vulvox collectors will not depend upon complicated advances in quantum or solid state physics. Our novel combination photovoltaic-solar thermal collectors will achieve the unprecedented efficiencies predicted here by means of relatively simple modifications to solar energy equipment; modifications that can be developed at a moderate cost.
The Vulvox solar system will generate higher power levels than competing parabolic troughs and solar power towers, while retaining all of the storage capabilities of solar thermal power.
Besides the inherent efficiency advantages of this collection system, we are sure we can add other modifications that will increase energy collection and electricity generation beyond those efficiencies. Modifications to increase the heat flow rate of the thermal collectors are an example.
Every time a photovoltaic panel system is upgraded and increases in power we can substitute it for a lower power panels used in previous "builds." and the higher power panels can be used in upgraded combination PV-solar thermal collectors with higher efficiency. Also, every time solar thermal systems are upgraded they can be combined with the latest practical photovoltaic collectors to keep the next generation combination systems cost competitive and to keep their efficiency higher than all other collection systems.
Contact us for more information.
HTTP://VULVOX.TRIPOD.COM
PROTN7@ATT.NET
We will continue to read this article as long as people like Nancy Pelosi are in office doing everything in their power to block solor power production/research. If you ask me, it just makes the most sense. There is more energy in one second of sunlight then the total amount of energy man has created since dawn of time. How anyone could be against solor power is beyond me. Unless you have an agenda, everyone should be on board with solor. Wouldn't it be nice to breathe clean air for a change?
I notice that this site has been spammed by Neil Farbstein, so-called president of Vulvox.
Mr Farbstein repeatedly spams tech forums with false claims of scientific breaktroughs, supposedly by his bogus company Vulvox. He is claiming to have breaktroughs in genetic engineering, nanotechnology and even cold fusion. Yet any search on these discoveries will quickly find that they don't exist.
Jake Revive Your Life
Bottom line is that we all need to be on board with solar power. It is the best solution for times where green house gases are at a max and the polar ice caps are melting fast.
Good article....thanks!
Feel free to check out some of my sites eco friendly tips.
http://reviveyourlife.com
Solar power makes sense, but the space issues and efficiency make it a little less desirable (but no less important) than say, wind power.
Renewable Energy
http://www.efficientgreenpower.com/
There was a breakthrough last year on silicon - I don't remember the details,but it is darker black and has many raised nano particles on the surface, creating more surface area. Some tests had shown that an improvement of 500% could be obtained with this new silicon. I wonder if this could multiply that by more?
http://blogs.ebay.com/suzyjenkins