As previously noted Google wants renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. And, they are doing something more than simply stating such an expectation.
Reuters reports upon greater efforts toward this goal. “We’ve been looking at very unusual materials for the mirrors both for the reflective surface as well as the substrate that the mirror is mounted on,” the company’s green energy czar Bill Weihl told Reuters.
Google is developing a new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants.
in late 2007 Google said it would invest in companies and do research of its own to produce affordable renewable energy within a few years. The company’s engineers have been focused on solar thermal technology, in which the suns energy is used to heat up a substance that produces steam to turn a turbine. Mirrors focus the sun’s rays on the heated substance.
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 were 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. Its a lot of money.”
That works out to 12 to 18 cents a kilowatt hour.
Google hopes to have a viable technology to show internally in a couple of months, Weihl said. It will need to do accelerated testing to show the impact of decades of wear on the new mirrors in desert conditions.
“Were not there yet,” he said. “I’m very hopeful we will have mirrors that are cheaper than what companies in the space are using…”
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Another player in solar thermal is Bright Source Energy. Recent Treehugger posts provide some information about their projects.