Monday, December 10, 2007

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)

Over at Blog.Okito.net it is suggested that vehicle-to-grid (V2G) plug-in hybrids merely shift energy consumption to the U.S. electric power grid and that alone can not solve our energy problems.

That might be right. A large percentage of the electric power grid is currently fueled by non-renewable sources such as coal, natural gas, petroleum, etc. Shouldn’t we be replacing gasoline with a renewable energy source to primarily power our vehicles?
The nation's largest utility in customers served, investor-owned Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), this fall announced a bold plan to install nearly five times the amount of solar power that is now operating across the United States … PG&E and its technology partners … will use nothing more complicated than mirrors, lots of them, to concentrate ... sunlight ... The arrays will heat water to drive turbines … One firm that has been working with PG&E … thinks it can drive CSP costs down with simpler, flat mirrors and turbines that run at a cooler temperature, like those in nuclear power plants.
You can read it: U.S. News and World Report

Is this Big Solar, beginning to emerge into the realm of Big Energy
??