Why Solar? > Types of Solar: Concentrated Solar

Concentrated Solar uses reflectors to concentrate the sun’s rays onto a collector. The collector either stores the heat energy or uses a heat engine to convert it into mechanical energy.

The range of applications of this technology is enormous, and varies from the small solar cookers, which are becoming popular in developing countries, to vast fields of utility-scale mirrors, such as those employed by Solar Tres, a concentrated solar power (CSP) project slated for construction in Spain. This installation will focus hundreds of times the sun’s energy on a single collector tower, producing 5 megawatts of electricity using liquid sodium as a heat exchanger. Additionally, it will have the fringe benefit of being one of the very few renewable energy technologies to come out of a James Bond Movie. Take that, Biomass!

 

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