When 2GreeenEnergy was launched in 2009, solar thermal with molten salt energy storage appeared to be a great solution. Yet it fizzled out when the cost of energy from wind and solar PV fell like a stone. California’s Ivanpah facility …
Category: Solar Thermal
Solar Thermal
Gordon Hutchinson describes the photo here: A new solar energy system just went online — and it’s set to redefine how the world generates power. This system isn’t just a revolution in solar power. It’s transforming energy as we know …
Tagged with: Solar Thermal
Solar Thermal
In the year 2009, the year 2GreenEnergy was launched, the world of renewable energy had high hopes for the technology shown at left. At the time, solar thermal had a huge advantage over competitive approaches to clean power, in particular, …
Tagged with: Solar Thermal
Solar Thermal: Down But Not Out
The plummeting price of solar PV delivered what appeared at the time to be a death blow to the solar thermal industry, aka concentrated solar power (CSP). Here, however, we have the Israeli government unveiling a $23 billion USD plan …
Solar Thermal
Here’s a little piece of renewable energy fraud that I thought readers might enjoy. It relies on people’s abundant ignorance of solar thermal itself (aka concentrated solar power/CSP), a technology that has been around for decades, and is struggling to …
Tagged with: Solar Thermal
American Business Once Had a Conscience
What Thomas Edison said here in the 1880s is a reminder that all this could have gone another way; i.e., the entire environmental mess in which we find ourselves today could have been avoided. Of course, before solar PV and …
Take a Cool Guess—The Fun Quiz on Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability. Today’s Topic: Climate Heroes
Question: Sweden has taken more action than any other country to mitigate climate change. What country ranks #2?
Solar-Powered Gadgetry
I’m normally not a fan of solar-powered gadgets, because in most cases there’s a more convenient way to accomplish the task at hand using a minimum of energy, and the device in question has more value as a novelty than …
Solar Thermal: A Comeback?
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since the launch of 2GreenEnergy almost exactly 10 years ago. From the perspective of solar, we saw: Lots of promise for solar thermal (aka concentrated solar power or CSP)
Solar Thermal: Not Gone, Not Forgotten
When I wrote Renewable Energy–Facts and Fantasies in 2010, solar thermal (aka concentrated solar power or CSP) was a big deal, largely because of the way it readily lent itself to solving the intermittency issue via energy storage as heat, …
