So which is cooler (global warming or style wise, either way), a solar power plant made of balloons or min nuclear power plants?
Green Wombat describes a balloon solar collector:
It sounds like something out of one of those do-it-your-self magazines: Stitch together two buck’s worth of thin-film plastic – the stuff potato chip bags are made of – stick in a photovoltaic cell, inflate with air and, voilà, you’ve got yourself a “solar balloon” that will generate a kilowatt of electricity. String together 10,000 balloons and you’ve got a solar power plant that can power a town. California startup Cool Earth Solar believes this high-low tech approach is what will make its solar power plants competitive with fossil fuels.
Instead of using expensive optics to concentrate sunlight on the solar cell, Cool Earth manipulates the air pressure inside the balloon to change the shape of the mirrored surface so that it focuses the maximum amount of sunlight on the solar cell, boosting electricity generation 300 to 400 times. By replacing expensive materials like steel with cheap-as-chips plastic and air, Cool Earth aims to dramatically lower the price of solar electricity.
A prototype power plant is being built in a field across the street from Cool Earth’s offices and Lamkin says a 1.5 megawatt plant will be constructed early next year in the Central Valley town of Tracy.
Lamkin estimates that a Cool Earth power plant can be up and running in six months, which should appeal to [California] utilities [...], which are under the gun to meet state mandates to obtain 20% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010.
“Our major structural element is air, which so far is free,” Lamkin says. “And the sun isn’t taxed either.” Yet.
Careful, don’t temp Obama.
A micro nuclear reactor in your garden?
According to The Guardian, a U.S. company based in New Mexico, Hyperion Power Generation, has designed mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes. The company has already received firm orders and expects to deliver about 4,000 ‘individual’ plants between 2013 and 2023.
In the U.S., where people spent more energy than in other parts of the world, such a reactor should be able to deliver power to only 10,000 households, for a cost of $2,500 per home. But in developing nations, one HPM could provide enough power for 60,000 homes or more, for a cost of less than $400. This is quite reasonable if you agree with Hyperion, which states that the energy from its HPMs will cost about 10 cents/watt.
