(Reuters) Ari Rabinovitch - An Israeli solar power company, Brenmiller Energy, says it has developed a new, more efficient way to store heat from the sun that could give a boost to the thermal solar power industry by enabling plants to run at full capacity night and day. By next year company founder Avi Brenmiller said he will have a 1.5 megawatt (MW), 15-acre site in the Negev desert connected to Israel's national grid, and a number of 10 to 20-MW pilots abroad are expected to follow, which will produce electricity at a price which competes with power from fossil-fuelled plants. A row of parabolic mirrors now tracks the sun, concentrating the rays to generate the steam needed to drive a turbine for producing electricity. Some of the solar heat is also conducted by a fluid into a novel storage system beneath the mirrors which operates at 550 degrees Celsius. This store can then be tapped at night or on cloudy days to keep the steam supply to the turbines flowing. The innovation is in the medium that stores the heat.
2014-09-24 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive