Power Tower
"It’s flexible. It’s like a big battery of molten salt instead of lithium," saidFernando Gonzalez, CEO of.
Parabolic Dish Concentrator
Focus:10-kW prototype dish.
Pennsylvania, United States
’s prototype unit is a simplified, lower-cost version of a decades-old concept, operating at Pennsylvania State University’s campus in Berks County. Polished aluminum petals cover a 14-square-meter aperture, beaming sunlight onto a receiver at the focal point. The Focus dish is mounted on a dual-axis tracking system, so it’s always facing the sun. The receiver transfers heat to an engine or generator and, depending on the heat transfer fluid, can deliver thermal energy of up to600 °C, the company claims. A 30-kilowatt, 42-square-meter aperture production unit is in development.
Bottom line:Focus may be best suited for «distributed thermal» applications, with one or dozens of dishes directly providing heat to factories, wastewater treatment plants, or desalination facilities, saidNaoise Irwin, CEO of.
Linear Fresnel
Parabolic Trough
