I’ve written about Solarflux, its FOCUS parabolic dish, and its new tool, CASPER, which is a concentrating solar power (CSP) performance comparison tool. I’ve also had the pleasure of sitting down with Solarflux CEO Naoise Irwin and CTO John Fangman, who invented the FOCUS dish. This is the second part … [continued]
The Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) facility in California’s Mojave Desert retired five of its solar plants (SEGS 3 through 7) in July 2021 and plans to retire a sixth (SEGS 8) in September 2021, based on information submitted to EIA and published in our Preliminary Electric Generator Inventory. After … [continued]
Solar energy has been exploited in direct capacities, for various purposes, well before solar photovoltaic cell and module technology became the most prominent example of “solar energy technology.” Solar stills, solar cookers, sunlight concentrators, solar furnaces, solar fire starters, et cetera, have a long history of use and/or suggestion of use. For instance, there’s fairly good evidence (though disputed by some academics) that solar fire-starters have been in use in Central Asia for a fair many thousands of years.
