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Sopogy to Test Micro CSP Technology in Northern Idaho

August 29, 2007 | 1 Comment

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Spokane, Washington [RenewableEnergyAccess.com] Sopogy, Inc. of Honolulu, Hawaii, announced it will deploy its concentrating solar power (CSP) technology at the Avista Clean Energy Test Site located in Rathdrum, Idaho. The trial is to demonstrate how Sopogy's system will perform in a northern climate, generating power on a utility grid scale.

"This is an exciting step toward helping to accelerate distributed generation and wider use of renewable energy. Sopogy, Inc. is proud to be bringing the proven economics of Concentrated Solar Power to the Pacific Northwest."

-- Darren T. Kimura, President & CEO, Sopogy, Inc.

Avista, a Spokane based electric and natural gas utility company, created the Clean Energy Test Site to allow for deployment and testing of emerging renewable energy technologies. Ultimately the applications could provide additional renewable energy for utility customers.

Sopogy's MicroCSPTM is designed to provide thermal energy as process heat, generate electricity, or provide air conditioning in areas with the right solar conditions. Many areas of the Northwest have long days and clear summer skies and a summer daytime peaking load, an ideal condition for MicroCSPTM technologies.

"This is an exciting step toward helping to accelerate distributed generation and wider use of renewable energy. Sopogy, Inc. is proud to be bringing the proven economics of Concentrated Solar Power to the Pacific Northwest" said Darren T. Kimura, president and CEO of Sopogy, Inc.

"Avista welcomes Sopogy to the Clean Energy Test Site," said Roger Woodworth, Avista vice president for Sustainable Energy Solutions. "We are looking forward to working with them to prove out the merits of this technology, both on our system and in our region."

At full deployment Sopogy plans to produce up to 50 kilowatts of electric power that will be integrated onto the Avista grid. The highest output of the Sopogy systems is expected to coincide with the peak demands of the utility's high summer daytime load. The initial phase of the Sopogy test deployment will begin in mid-September, with full deployment targeted for the summer of 2008.

Solar Energy

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hussain-alrobaei-50048

August 31, 2007

Contrary to photovoltaics, where solar radiation is directly transformed into electricity by solar cells, solar thermal power plants boast high degrees of efficiency and low electricity production costs even in great heat. If solar thermal plants also utilize co-generated heat, e.g. for air-conditioning, for generating industrial process steam or for desalination of sea water, ideally up to 25 % of the captured radiation can be transformed into electricity and an additional 35 % into utilizable energy. According to the result of recent study, this exceeds the energy utilization efficiency of conventional photovoltaic plants by four to six times and implementation of combined RO and Multi-Effect Distillation (MED) scheme for repowering and modification of RO plant will increase the desalted water production in about 17022.9 ton/year for each MW design thermal energy of parabolic solar collector arrays.. Moreover Solar Combined RO/MED scheme [1] has the potential of boosting water output through simple or full integration at the same time reducing the power to water ratio by 29 %. Thereby, the proposed scheme is a promising technology for climate compatible power with such enormous potential that combined RO/MED units would allow 24 hr economical dispatch of desalted water with high maneuver of boosting electrical power in electrical power grid.  [1] Hussain Alrobaei, 2007 , REPOWERING AND MODIFICATION OF GRID CONNECTED REVERSE OSMOSIS DESALINATION PLANTS / environmental-expert.com/resultarticlept.asp.

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