Green Options

SolarReserve; a California start-up spin-out from United Technologies’ Rocketdyne has filed an application with the CPUC to build a 150-megawatt heliostat solar farm with seven hours of after-sunset energy stored in molten salt. These are the rocket scientists responsible for our solar-powered space exploration.

Theirs would be the first heliostat type of solar array to produce grid power in California. Abengoa has several in Spain, and plans one in Arizona. United Technologies has licensed the original technology to the new company SolarReserve and its wholly owned subsidiary Rice Solar Energy, LLC, (RSE).

We have featured Concentrated Solar Power several times in this space, so it was nice to see that the Science section of the New York Times is finally starting to cover large-scale solar thermal plants used for generating electricity. (An article on SkyStream wind turbines is in the same section!)

The great news about solar thermal “Power Towers” is that they are able to store solar energy, which has always been a problem before. How does a solar “Power Tower” work?