Public Power - October 2008 - (Page 25)

dium, gallium and selenium). The company claims the cells will soon get below $1 a watt, the price at which solar reaches grid parity in nearly every U.S. market. Light and flexible enough to be used directly as building materials, thin film solar eliminates the cost of installing heavy glass and aluminum frames on the roof— the solar cells are the roof. Bill Gross is mapping a different path to cut-rate solar photovoltaics. Gross has spun off more than 40 companies from his Pasadena-based IdeaLab, including one that Yahoo bought for $1.7 billion. One of his latest start-ups, Energy Innovations, buys the world’s best solar cells—the ones that power the Mars Rover—from Boeing subsidiary Spectrolab. The company wraps those cells in cheap magnifying lenses, to concentrate the sun’s power 800 times. With the concentrators, a square inch of the expensive solar cell makes as much electricity as 800 square inches without the magnifiers. A 20-cent microprocessor keeps the device tracking the sun. Twenty years ago, that same microchip would have cost $2,000, which indicates just how quickly a well-functioning market can bring costs down. While the high-tech world focuses on turning the sun’s light into electricity, utilities are signing the biggest solar power purchase agreements to date with companies working on solar thermal electricity. Using big arrays of mirrors, these power producers concentrate the sun’s heat to make steam to drive power plant turbines, or to drive a Stirling engine. All aim to make solar electricity cheaper than coal. A company called Ausra, for instance, reduces capital costs by replacing the custom-curved mirrors used in the original Mojave Desert parabolic trough plants with factory-produced flat glass. They also store large volumes of hot water to continue generation when the sun goes down. BrightSource Energy has a different strategy: by pointing all its mirrors at a single collector atop a tower, the company aims to make solar steam hot enough to drive high-efficiency supercritical turbines. The Solar Energy Industry Association estimates that some 4,000 megawatts of solar thermal electricity is currently in www.APPAnet.org Nanosolar of San Jose, Calif., developed a solar panel for utility-scale power generation. Last year, a German company chose the technology for a 1-MW solar plant. Photo courtesy Nanosolar. planning or development in the United States. The Western Governors Association has identified prime sites capable of producing 200 gigawatts, close to transmission lines and away from environmentally sensitive areas. Geothermal—The immense heat within the earth inspires Alaskan entrepreneur Bernie Karl, who owns a hot springs resort and had the outlandish idea to freeze an ice hotel, all summer-long. Although experts told him 165-degree water was not nearly hot enough to do the job, he did it anyway. He went on to develop a low-temperature geothermal power plant, now being mass-produced by United Technologies for worldwide sale. In Texas alone, UTC estimates wastewater from oil wells could produce 10,000 megawatts of electricity, at almost no cost. Tidal—One of the beauties of low-carbon energy is that nearly every region of the United States has at least one renewable resource waiting to be tapped. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, entrepreneurs are developing technologies to transform the steady, predictable power of waves into reliable electricity, while reviving local industry. (The world’s first commercial wave farm began operating last fall off Portugal’s coast). In New York’s East River, a company called Verdant powers a grocery store with tidal turbines, which look like underwater windmills and reverse direction to capture both incoming and outgoing tides. Coal—The continuing importance of coal is also spurring innovation. An engi- neer named Eli Gal—who led the General Electric team that improved sulfur dioxide scrubbers when Congress capped the pollutant in 1990—is now working with French power giant Alstom on a process to capture flue gas carbon with chilled ammonia. Gal and his team intend to cut the costs of amine scrubbing almost in half. Their pilot began operation in March at We Energies’ Pleasant Prairie Power Plant in Wisconsin. Michael Trachtenberg, a brain scientist, has developed a liquid membrane filter to capture carbon dioxide from flue gases. The “carbozyme” filter uses the same enzyme our bodies use to shuttle gas out of our tissues and lungs. Isaac Berzin, an Israeli chemical engineer who developed algae bioreactors for the International Space Station, recycles the valuable carbon in flue gases by feeding it to algae, then converting the algae to biofuel. Unlike corn or even switchgrass, which can be harvested just once or twice a year, algae grow fast enough to be harvested daily, like “milking a cow,” Berzin said. They’re the richest plant in the high-energy oils, ideal for making biodiesel, and can grow on wasteland with wastewater. Having completed pilots at coal, oil and gas facilities, including Arizona Public Service Co.’s Redhawk natural gas power plant, Greenfuels now has a $92 million contract to use carbon emissions from a cement plant to make increasingly valuable alternatives to oil. Electric Cars—Advances in electric cars are opening further avenues for utiliOCTOBER 2008 25 http://www.APPAnet.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Public Power - October 2008

Public Power - October 2008 Contents Perspective 10 Questions The Future of Fuels in a Carbon-Constrained World An Energy Revolution Energy Policy in 2009 and Beyond A Green Reincarnation Beyond the Green Bandwagon Reliability Green Energy Community Broadband Customer Service Hometown Connections Human Resources Parting Shot

Public Power - October 2008

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