Thermal

Google announced on Tuesday plans to put hundreds of millions of dollars into alternative energy. The question now is whether the company is advancing the state of the art or just imitating everyone else who is dumping loads of money into the field.

The answer is some of both.

One of the first companies to get funding from Google will be eSolar, which will make solar thermal plants based on the heliostat design. In this concept, an array of flat mirrors gathers and directs sunlight onto a water tower. The water boils into steam, which turns a turbine to make … Read more

Promethean Power, a company spun out of MIT to build a solar-powered refrigerator, has secured initial funding from an Indian conglomerate that will help manufacture and distribute the product.

The Solar Turbine Group is a nonprofit organization formed by students from the Massachusetts Institute of technology that developed the system Promethean Power intends to commercialize.

STG has already built some of its solar turbines in the African country of Lesotho which are used for creating hot water and electricity.

The system uses parabolic troughs to generate the heat from sunlight to heat a liquid, which creates steam to turn a … Read more

Pacific Gas and Electric has entered into a contract to buy 177 megawatts of power from a solar thermal power plant that will be built by Ausra.

The power plant will be located in San Luis Obispo county in central California and provide, roughly, enough power for 60,000 homes. Ausra has filed applications to build the plant with the California Energy Commission and hopes to have the plant up and generating power in 2010.

This won't be the last solar thermal contract PG&E will sign. PG&E says it plans to get a gigawatt worth of power from solar thermal systems in five years. … Read more

If you run the dryer in the daytime and live in California, expect to pay for the privilege in the future.

Peter Darbee, CEO Pacific Gas & Electric, said the utility is currently running a smart meter trial at 25,000 homes and one of the goals is to figure out how to price peak power. Electricity demand is highest in the afternoon and PG&E is trying to figure out much the utility will have to charge for the power to curb demand. By curbing demand, PG&E can cut back on greenhouse gas emissions and, possibly, … Read more

Ausra, a solar thermal specialist from Australia, on Thursday said it will try to build solar power plants in the U.S. over the next seven years that collectively will generate a gigawatt worth of power. Three hundred megawatts worth of that capacity is already committed to FPL Group, a utility concentrated in Florida, according to Ausra.

Another likely customer is Pacific Gas & Electric. The California utility has committed to signing contracts for a gigawatt worth of solar thermal power over the next five years. PG&E is talking to a number of solar thermal companies about this, … Read more

The Solar Turbine Group is trying to bring refrigeration to emerging nations by harnessing the power of the sun.

The organization, which consists largely of MIT alumni, has devised a solar thermal generator that can be brought to market for $12,000 or less. A typical system can generate 600 watts of electricity or 20 kilowatts of energy for heating and cooling, according to Sam White, director for STG. The same system can also produce both at the same time, albeit less of each.

Like other solar thermal systems, STG uses mirrors. Mirrors concentrate heat from the sun onto a … Read more

DAVIS, Calif.--Ausra CEO Peter Le Lievre says it will only take a little bit of desert to light up the United States.

Ausra has developed technology for converting heat from the sun into electricity. The trick is that it's far more efficient, the company claims, than traditional solar thermal technologies from companies such as Solel and Acciona.

The process works as follows: Water goes into a tube that sits over an array of flat mirrors in the desert. By the time it gets to the end of the tube, the water turns to steam, which then turns a … Read more

Here's a convergence device you probably haven't heard much about at technology conferences, but it's interesting.

SolarAttic sells a system--the Pool Convection System 2--that sucks hot air out of the attic of your house and pumps it into a heat exchanger to heat your pool. In the summertime, the temperature in your attic can get up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit, says SolarAttic vice president James Kantorowicz.

"It also helps cool down the house by transferring that heat out of the attic," he said.

The system costs around $5,000 (including installation), which makes it comparable … Read more

It's a common combat-after-dark feature on YouTube: the greenish, hot white blob--representing the human circulation system--bolts from cover and is promptly cut in half by 20mm fire.

Now that same thermal imaging technology is lighting up some even tougher foes, termites.

The Australian company Termicam presents Termibot, a thermal video equipped robot that searches out termite nests by homing in on their thermal signature--and it does it without tearing your house apart. That's right, the heat generated by these busy little buggers shows up right through the baseboards.

Thermographic devices detect infrared radiation emitted by an object based … Read more