Hot Salt May Improve Solar Efficiency

Solar power is really gaining a presence in our society. The applications of this technology are proving to be varied and far reaching. One can now find solar powered garage doors, water heaters, and even chargers for their mobile devices. But solar power on a large scale, used to provide electricity to the national grid, is something that has been seen as a "long shot." The biggest impediment to the widespread use of this technology as a means of producing electricity has been the storage of the energy. Battery technology, while it has improved, has not gotten to the point where solar power plants can provide on demand power. When the sun is shining, things are great, but at night, or on overcast days, even the most advanced solar technology needs a good storage solution.

BrightSource, a solar power company that provides solar power to residents in California, has found a solution that not only makes it possible to have solar powered feeding into the grid at night, but that can also vastly improve the efficiency of this technology. They utilize a tower technology that incorporates the use of molten salt to store energy for later use. Heat is collected from the solar panels and is turned into steam, which turns a turbine. Excess heat is stored in a special sand that will store the energy. The heat can then be turned into steam to turn the turbine and create electricity when needed. The use of this technology makes solar power competitive in the marketplace as the cost of installation is much less than some expensive battery technologies - it also increases the scale of the capacity ability for solar plants.

Not only does this make solar power available on a more regular basis, it actually increases the production capacity of the power plant, allowing them to feed the grid for more hours out of the day and thus turning a larger profit. The molten salt tower project is also less costly than adding additional solar panels or battery capacity, reducing the initial costs of setup. By adding the molten salt storage capacity, they are able to get more power without having to build more power plants. Using this technology, BrightSource expects to add seven power plants worth of power to the California grid, by building six new solar power plants and molten sand storage. 

Chris Keenan is a green and general blog writer. He writes for many sites including Precision Garage Door. Chris also maintains a personal house repair blog.