New Low Cost Unique Solar Design

You would not believe what we at Green Products found and no they are not UFO'S. Can you imagine a field planted with silver balloons as far as the eye can see, or a hillside covered with silver balls? It’s not Christo’s latest pop-art install, but rather, a solar farm. This is what Cool Earth out of Livermore, California envisions in the very near future. The solar collection concept is not new, but the concentrator is different from anything seen before on any renewable energy product.

The current installed solar plants use flat-panels. Each panel is heavy, large, easily damaged, and costly to repair. This means the cost to produce a watt of electricity is 5-7 times greater than using natural gas and is not an alternative to fossil fuels. This is no longer true with the Cool Earth solar balloon system.

The silver orbs are made from Mylar, with half the orb covered in a mirror-like material and the other half clear. The material is resistive to the normal outside elements and easily repaired if damaged. Near the top center is the solar cell that converts all the concentrated light to electrical energy. This is truly one of the most unique green products we have seen in the renewable energy sector.

The orb’s design will concentrate the sunlight 300 to 400 times better than traditional roof mounted solar panels. By design, this reduces the cost of each orb and greatly increases electrical output per cubic inch of solar cell material. Which means that cost of the electricity produced will be on par with current natural gas power plants.

Each balloon is eight feet in diameter and can withstand over 100 mile per hour winds. The balloons are linked together in series, with the initial installation able to produce 10 megawatts, enough to power 3,500 homes during the day.

One of the areas under consideration is the need to add more peaking power plants, also known as peaker plants. A peaker plant is operational only when demand for electricity is at the greatest, like during the hot summer months. This green product could be used to eliminate rolling brown outages that we have encountered in the past few years.

At green products one of the most interesting aspects we found is the way the system is brought together to create a solar power plant and the near elimination of physical limitations on plant installations.

Michael