Solar Thermal Power

BY 

BEN HARACK

 – SEPTEMBER 17, 2010POSTED IN: FEATURED ARTICLES, NEWS, RENEWABLE ENERGY, SLIDESHOW ARTICLES

• 6Share
• Email

1. What is so special or unique?
   1. Very High Temperature
   2. Heat storage is easier than electricity storage
   3. Can produce dispatchable baseload energy
   4. Backup power easy and cheap to implement
   5. Water use can be minimized
   6. Cheaper than large-scale photovoltaics
   7. Cheaper turbines if used for baseload
2. How do we build these?
   1. Parabolic Trough
   2. Power Tower (Heliostat)
3. Cost
4. Conclusion: Great Potential

The energy potential of the sun’s light is obvious to anyone who has ever seen a magnifying glass used in the sun to burn things like ants, paper, or themselves. Direct sunshine delivers a lot of energy to what it strikes. By focusing even a small area of it down to a small point, a magnifying glass can create enough heat to burn through many materials.

To produce electric power from heat, we generally use a steam turbine. To run a steam turbine, you need something that gets hot (like a nuclear reactor core), and something that is used as cooling (like water from a lake or river). The difference between the hot and cold temperatures defines how efficient the heat to electricity conversion can be. The majority of the world’s electricity is produced by steam turbines. The difference between forms of power is generally where the heat comes from. Here we are talking about using sunlight as our heat source.