As the race to find more alternatives to fossil fuels speeds up, newer ways to produce energy are coming up. But none of these new inventions are as interesting and innovative as the Cool Earth Solar “Balloon”. This particular balloon is designed to produce 400 times more electricity as compared to a solar cell that does not contain the company’s concentrator.
The main concept behind this design is to create an inflatable plastic thin-film balloon, i.e. the solar concentrator that upon inflation focuses the sunlight onto a photovoltaic cell held at its focal point.
A power plant utilizing this new equipment is already being constructed by Cool Earth in Livermore, CA. This new plant is modest in size, creating only 1.4 Megawatts but if this plant works as well as it is expected, they plan on launching a full sized plant next summer.
The main advantage of this new invention is that it’s made up of a very common and cheap material and thus it is not costly at all. According to the Cool Earth Solar CEO Rob Lamkin, the plastic thin film is abundant and cheap and it only costs two dollars for the plastic material necessary for the solar concentrator.
This is a major breakthrough in the field of alternative power resources and solar energy and if their plant is successful, our current energy shortage problem may be solved and as the solar energy is abundant and ever lasting, there would be no need to worry about its extinction.
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