Weihl said Google is looking to cut the cost of making heliostats, the fields of mirrors that have to track the sun, by at least a factor of two, "ideally a factor of three or four."
"Typically what we're seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost," Weihl said. "So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It's a lot of money."
Another technology that Google is working on is gas turbines that would run on solar power rather than natural gas, an idea that has the potential of further cutting the cost of electricity, Weihl said.
"In two to three years we could be demonstrating a significant scale pilot system that would generate a lot of power and would be clearly mass manufacturable at a cost that would give us a levelized cost of electricity that would be in the 5 cents or sub 5 cents a kilowatt hour range," Weihl said.
Google is invested in two solar thermal companies, eSolar and BrightSolar but is not working with these companies in developing the cheaper mirrors or turbines.
Reuters
2 comments:
Hopefully an iconic company such as Google leading the way in renewable energy sources will encourage the average Joe to do something about the rising electricity prices and invest in renewable energy sources. I've wrote a guide (you can find here) all about building your own solar panels and wind turbines, sales are constantly rising and every day thousands of us are realizing how easy it is to drastically lower your electric bill!
When google says, world listens. Lets see if we will really pay 5 cents for a kwh.
VR
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