Pages

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Solar Power Turns 24 Hours

Bright Source's solar power generation Energy
Source from KOMPAS.com
Solar power is one alternative that is environmentally friendly and quite promising. However, this type of plant has its disadvantages because it can only operate optimally when sunlight is abundant.

Now the company's solar power plant in the United States berbasi, BrighSource Energy, has called SolarPlus innovation. The device is a combination of a solar tower and a store of energy generated using molten salt.

Solar power tower consists of thousands of heliostat to capture the sun rays. And as power plants generally, in it, there are turbines that will be driven by steam heated by the sun.

SolarPlus working mechanism is simple. When the hot days, heat will heat up and melt the salts present in the system. Well, when there was no hot sun, hot salt will be released again. The heat from the salt will further drive the turbine. In this way, solar power can work 24 hours without stopping, even though there is no sunlight.

Type of salt used is sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate. As reported by the IEEE on Thursday (08/04/2011), to apply the technology are made, BrightSource Energy is currently building the Ivanpah Solar Plant with a capacity of 392 megawatts in the Mojave desert, the United States.

No comments:

Post a Comment