Solargenix Energy, http://www.solargenix.com/, has commissioned a solar power plant in Mujave desert in Nevada, US. I came to know about this through Nat Geo when I was watching MegaStructures. The plant is able to generate some 22MW of electricity and is feeding it into the Nevada grid.
The solar power plant works this way. Very simply, sunlight is reflected using concave mirrors onto a special tube. The concave mirrors and the special glass tube have been specially made by Schott, AG. The concave mirrors focus sunlight onto this special tube. The glass tube is special because it is made from ultra-pure sand. This sand is free from metallic impurities. This helps it in letting through a lot more light w/o reflecting any of it. The glass tube has a metal tube inside and the air between the glass tube and the metal tube has been removed, creating a vacuum. In short, its a thermos. Temperatures inside this thermos can be as high as 700C. A synthetic oil is heated due to sunlight. The oil heats water to produce superheated steam, which drives an alternator.
The power plant is spread across 40acres of land. The cost of building this plant was high - something around 250M$. Doesn't sound much, but so much money for 22MW of power is high. However, the beauty is - fuel is free. All your investment is one time investment. The incremental costs are only maintenance costs.
The sceptics will argue that it is way to costly to be commercialized. I disagree. We have to start harnessing solar energy, wind energy etc today. The fuel is free. We don't have to invade other countries to get fuel :-).
Something like this should be done in Rajasthan's Thar desert. It will probably go a long way in solving India's energy crisis.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment