In certain configurations, the apparatus can be used for solar thermal energy generation and even water heating.
Solar thermal energy is low cost and easy to collect, and 100% efficient.
Solar thermal energy is 100% efficient, and it is free.
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He has devoted his entire 30-year career to solar thermal energy, a century-old idea that was dismissed as quixotic in the early 1990s, after oil and gas prices collapsed.
Similarly, solar thermal energy--which harnesses the heat of the sun to generate steam-powered turbines--consumes more than 2, 600 liters of water per megawatt hour, 200 liters more than coal-powered generation needs to produce the same energy.
Solar-thermal company BrightSource Energy Inc. pulled its high-profile IPO citing market conditions.
He dreams of building gigawatt-size plants, of shipping solar thermal power to the cloudy Northeast and of using molten salt to store energy so thermal plants can power homes at night. (Nevada Solar One is only for daytime peak loads.) He envisions mirrors in space that can soak up sunlight 24 hours a day.
Several companies have pulled their IPOs over the past year, including solar thermal power plant builder BrightSource Energy.
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Solar Energy Storage: Researchers at Berkeley Lab have developed a system for converting solar energy to chemical energy and, subsequently, to thermal energy.
Now salt is back on the table as states such as California green-light big solar thermal power projects to meet ambitious renewable energy mandates.
"Our potential in thermal solar power is four times the world's energy consumption, so you can have all the ambitions you want with that, " Tewfik Hasni, managing director of New Energy Algeria, or NEAL, a company created by the Algerian government in 2002 to develop renewable energy, told the Associated Press last year.
Then there is one of the oldest ways of getting power out from the sun: solar "thermal" installations, which absorb the sun's energy, transforming it into heat so it can boil water and run a turbine.
Google has invested directly in renewable energy projects, such as the 370-megawatt Ivanpah solar thermal power plant now under construction in California.
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Google said its "Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal" initiative will focus initially on solar thermal power, wind power technologies, geothermal systems and other technologies.
It is developing giant off-shore wind turbines, biomass power plants (including projects in Florida and Washington with Duke Energy), and, with its Ausra acquisition, solar thermal power plants.
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Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) said its "Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal" initiative will focus initially on solar thermal power, wind power technologies, geothermal systems and other technologies.
In other green energy news, Nicaragua announced plans to produce 94 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2017 and South America's first solar thermal plant recently opened in Antofagasta, Chile.
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The heat is supplied by sources that range from waste-to-energy facilities and biomass boilers to micro-CHP fuel cells and solar-thermal arrays.
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