Gizmo and Gadget News

I found this Solar Power News on the Drudge Report.
It seems as though Google Inc is a bit disappointed in the lack of breakthrough investment ideas in the green energy technology sector. Google has been working to develop its own new solar mirror technology that could possibly reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more.

Here is a quot “We’ve been looking at very unusual materials for the mirrors both for the reflective surface as well as the substrate that the mirror is mounted on,” the company’s green energy czar (I am so feed up with the us of czar it sounds like we are in Russia) Bill Weihl told Reuters Alternative Energy and Global Climate Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Google, known for its Internet search engine, in late 2007 said it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable renewable energy (alternative energy)within a few years.

The company’s engineers have been focusing on solar thermal technology, in which the sun’s ray’s are used to heat up some substance that produces steam to turn a turbine. Mirrors are used to focus the sun’s rays on the substance to be heated.

Weihl said Google is hoping to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the sun, by a factor of two, or three or maybe four.

“Typically what we’re seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost,” Weihl said. “So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It’s a lot of money.”

That works out to to something like 12 to 18 cents a kilowatt hour.

Google is hoping to have a viable technology to show internally within a couple of months, Weihl said. It will need to do accelerated testing to show the impact on the new mirrors over decades of wear in desert conditions.

“We’re not there yet,” he said. “I’m very hopeful we will have mirrors that are cheaper than what companies in the space are using..”

Gas Turbines are another technology that Google is working on. The gas turbines would run on solar power rather than natural gas, an idea that may have the potential of cutting the cost of electricity even more, Weihl said.

“In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range,” Weihl said.

Google has invested in two solar thermal companies, BrightSolar and eSolar but is not working with the two companies in developing the cheaper mirrors or turbines.

In wide-ranging remarks, Weihl also said the United States needs to raise government-backed research significantly, particularly in the very initial stages to encourage breakthrough ideas in the sector. ( government-backed research means your money and my money ).
Weihl said there is a lack of companies that have ideas that would be considered breakthroughs in the green technology sector. After announcing its plans to create renewable energy at a price lower than power from coal, it has invested less than $50 million in other companies.

Weihl said Google had not intended to invest much more in early years, but that there was little to buy.

“I would say it’s reasonable to be a little bit discouraged there and from my point of view, it’s not right to be seriously discouraged,” he said. “There isn’t enough investment going into the early stages of investment pipeline before the venture funds come into the play.”

The U.S. government ( you and me again ) needs to provide more funds to develop ideas at the laboratory stage, he said.

“I’d like to see $20 billion or $30 billion for 10 yrs (for the sector),” Weihl said. “That would be fabulous. It’s pretty clear what we have seen isn’t enough.” ($20 billion or $30 billion very generous with our money is he not! )

I found this Solar Power News on the Drudge Report and and the original artical was By Poornima Gupta. I thought it interesting hope you enjoy.