Can you imagine solar power 24 hours a day? Sounds far-fetched, but it will soon be a reality near Las Vegas. A new solar power plant being planned in Tonopah, Nevada will use heliostat mirrors to focus sunlight on a water tower, superheating water and creating steam that turns a turbine, generating electricity. The solar [...]
Concentrated solar power is a technology for generating utility scale solar power. But Syracuse’s Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems (SyracuseCoE) is showing that it can also be building integrated and used on a smaller, direct generation scale. At SyracuseCo, the building itself is a LEED-platinum-certified, 55,000 square-foot building that serves as a testing [...]
Continue reading about Concentrated Solar Power System to be Building Integrated?
Solar power holds a lot of promise. Particularly when it comes to sun-drenched regions in the world, like Abu Dhabi. The world’s largest solar plant will soon be built in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), about 75 miles south of Abu Dhabi. This week, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced that it plans to build [...]
Continue reading about World’s Largest Solar Plant in the UAE
Talk about biofuels has waxed and waned over the past decade. On one hand, people are excited about an alternative fuel to gasoline or diesel. On the flip side are concerns about the amount of energy it takes to produce a barrel of biofuels. Add into the mix the idea that taking corn off our [...]
Continue reading about Solar Biomass Refinery from Sundrop Fuels
As more and more people turn to solar energy for reliable, clean renewable power, there is still one major stumbling block. You can only tap into solar power when the sun is shining. But what if you could use solar power overnight? How could that work? Scientists at SolarReserve have come up with the antidote [...]
Our European counterparts have done a better job converting to solar energy than those of us in the United States. Many rooftops in Spain boast solar panels. In fact, one of the biggest stories in solar energy last year was the solar panels installed at a Spanish graveyard. Spain also now includes a large concentrated [...]
Continue reading about Spain Continues to Lead with Solar Power
Google, the well-known Internet search corporation, is getting into the solar energy business. It is working on mirror technology to be used in solar powered turbine plants. These plants use solar thermal power: sun shines on specially designed mirrors which focus the energy to superheat water which is then used to turn turbines, generating electricity. [...]
Solar thermal power, also known as concentrated solar power, is used to make solar energy more efficient – in other words, you get more electricity from the same amount of sunlight. Unlike photovoltaic solar panels which you might have seen on rooftops or powering traffic signals, solar thermal power is generated by huge satellite dishes [...]
