Sopogy’s Small-Scale Concentrated Solar Power

Hot Startup |  Solar

Eric Wesoff : August 2, 2010

Smaller-scale CSP means lower temperatures—and it could mean lower-cost solar power.

Concentrated solar power (CSP) might conjure up images of massive solar collector installations in the California Mojave or North African desert with tens of thousands of mirrors or miles of parabolic troughs — along with a lot of annoyed tortoises, politicians and environmentalists.

Sopogy’s take on CSP is a bit different than that.

Smaller in size and operating at lower temperatures, the Sopogy design is CSP for the distribution grid or even the rooftop level.  Smaller scale means one to twenty megawatts versus big CSP at 100 megawatts-plus, and lower temperature means 500 degrees F versus 800 degrees F.  Those lower temperatures mean that the components can be a little more off-the-shelf and may reduce the need for expensive evacuated tubes and mirrors.

I spoke with Sopogy’s CEO, Darren Kimura, in his headquarters on Oahu.  Kimura founded the now 40-person firm in 2001 in Palo Alto, California and is a 19-year veteran of the energy industry, having already founded and sold an energy firm prior to his stint at Sopogy.  The firm was originally funded by Kimura but has since taken about $20 million from investors including Cargill’s VC arm, Black River Ventures, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and TWC.

Sopogy is a parabolic trough design but the difference, according to the CEO, is this: “We are focused on reducing the cost by reducing the temperature.”  He added, “The sweet spot is 5 megawatts to 20 megawatts.”

Large-scale CSP firms like BrightSource Energy are “dealing with significantly larger projects with steam at nuclear power plant temperatures.”  Sopogy’s steam temperatures are more along the line of what a company like Ormat or Calpine would be encountering at a geothermal power plant.

Also like a geothermal power plant, the system uses an organic rankine cycle (ORC), which Kimura describes as akin to an air conditioner running backwards.  The ORC enables a lower collector temperature, an improved efficiency and the possibility of reducing the size of the solar field.  An ORC system uses the temperature difference between two liquids.

The MicroCSP of Sopogy also has the benefit of a thermal storage option.  The storage fluid is a food-grade mineral oil stored in a container “like a big thermos.”  Additionally, the thermal inertia of the working fluid eliminates some of the intermittency faced by a photovoltaic panel installation.

In addition to Wholesale Distributed Generation (WDG), Kimura sees the the low-profile trough system potentially used on a flat roof in a city.  The steam can be used to spin a small turbine or for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), air conditioning, process heat or evaporative desalination.

The Sopogy system doesn’t need high DNI (Direct Normal Irradiance) as the BrightSource Energy system does, according to Kimura. BrightSource needs 7 plus DNI but Sopogy can work at 5 DNI.  That means Sopogy can and is installing systems in the Pacific Northwest, Idaho, the Middle East, Spain and Australia.

“We are competing against PV [and] we are cheaper than most PV,” according to the CEO.  Kimura said that the capex depends on the market and depends largely on the local labor costs since the system is built on-site.  The projects can be installed for as little as $3 per watt, but in general, the cost is $5 per watt with an LCOE of about 20 cents per kilowatt-hour.

“We have about 75 megawatts under contract and in the process of being deployed,” according to the CEO.

Other CSP players include Ausra (recently purchased by Areva), Abengoa (which is doing small scale CSP for air conditioning), BrightSource, eSolar, and SHEC.  Michael Kanellos has written about next-generation solar thermal and molten salt storage, while Brett Prior writes about the economics of CSP here.

Original Article at – http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/sopogys-small-concentrated-solar-power

Solar Thermal Gears Up for a Comeback

Low PV costs and a shaky economy have slowed the development of large-scale concentrating solar power plants, but CSP producers are

Start-ups were emerging every week, introducing new super-concentrating mirror technologies, special reflective films and other innovations.

Companies began announcing plans for utility-scale solar thermal plants anywhere there was sun in the United States. Solar thermal, also called concentrating solar power (CSP), not only had a cost advantage over photovoltaics, it offered one thing PV never could: storage, and thus stability.

So where did all the solar thermal go?

While there have been a few highly publicized bouts between large-scale solar thermal proponents and conservation groups concerned about the land required to build such plants, the real issue comes down to simple economics. Back when there was private capital available to fund projects like giant solar plants in the desert, the technology was still new and relatively untested. Now, just as the technology has matured, private capital has dried up with the recession.

Federal stimulus money has provided some grants and loan guarantees, but by all accounts the government just can’t afford to be the only funder of large-scale solar thermal plants. Moreover, the silicon glut is long gone, and PV is now the better option for utilities looking to get renewable energy into their portfolios cheaply and quickly.

Elsewhere in the world, CSP is still the technology of choice for large-scale solar, according to Jayesh Goyal, North American sales director for French utility Areva, which recently acquired Silicon Valley solar thermal start-up Ausra Solar.

The key for the U.S. market is to bring down the cost of the equipment, its installation and its operation and maintenance.

“For awhile there was a lot of development down the path of very customized solutions—lots of complicated lenses and materials,” said Sumeet Jain, a principal with CMEA Capital, a longtime investor in solar technology. “That means more expense—and maybe higher performance—but definitely at a lot of expense.”

Now companies are leveraging more off-the-shelf components, Jain said. “Solar thermal projects, for example, might go with a standard boiler or opt for flat mirrors instead of custom, curved glass.”

Such choices make it easier to get financing, because companies are using tested, proven components, Jain added. It also makes it easier to partner with manufacturers to get better deals on parts and drive down the overall cost of a project.

A number of solar thermal companies are working on the cost problem, each finding new ways to make the economics more attractive to American utilities.

There are three primary CSP designs on the market today: solar towers, parabolic troughs and linear-Fresnel systems — and proponents of each have a rivalry similar to that between PV and thin film. Engineers can wax poetic for hours on the differences between the three, but the fact is that all CSP systems work in essentially the same way: Reflective surfaces with tracking systems are used to concentrate heat from the sun into a receiver filled with a heat-conducting fluid. It is then transferred to an engine that converts the heat to electricity.

In parabolic trough systems, each trough has its own receiver, while linear-Fresnel systems feature several rows of mirrors that point to a single receiver. In tower systems, thousands of tracking mirrors in a field capture and reflect sunlight to a central receiver atop a tower. Each technology has been touted as the most efficient, stable, cost-effective choice in the solar thermal repertoire. So far, linear-Fresnel — the technology used by Ausra Solar — has been dominating the market.

However, the parabolic trough team recently has made some advances in cost reductions. Colorado-based SkyFuel, for example, is set this year to commercialize its SkyTrough, a product the company estimates uses 30 percent fewer materials, 40 percent fewer parts and requires half the assembly time of the average solar thermal system. Those numbers are backed by a report on SkyTrough published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Honolulu-based Sopogy sells what it calls a MicroCSP parabolic trough system that allows for the affordable, quick installation of smaller solar-generating plants, in the 2MW range.

The company’s systems can be installed in half the time it takes to install other systems, according to Sopogy representatives, and don’t require electricians or specialized installers, which reduces installation costs by 60 to 80 percent.

Sopogy’s greatest innovation, however, may be its marketing strategy: All CSP systems can operate at lower temperatures to fulfill a variety of demands beyond simply generating power. Sopogy has targeted that broader market, selling its system as a device with many applications — from power generation to cooling to drying.

In its first installation, a 2MW thermal energy plant in Hawaii, Sopogy is generating power on the grid; the next phase will help power a small desalination plant. In a rooftop installation at Sempra Energy in San Diego, Sopogy’s system is running the building’s air conditioning system.

“They’re getting free air conditioning from the sun,” Darren Kimura, Sopogy’s founder, said at this week’s Intersolar Conference in San Francisco. “It’s solar-augmented cooling. That makes the building more energy efficient. In that instance, we don’t necessarily think of the system as solar technology. It’s an energy conservation technology.”

While individual companies are making incremental improvements to CSP technology, until the cost is lower than that of photovoltaics, utilities are likely to continue to embrace PV. To overcome the bias, secure customers and acquire project financing, Goyal says companies need to be ready to back performance claims with their balance sheets.

That’s something most start-ups can’t do, which is why many of them are partnering with larger industrial partners. According to Goyal, that was the case when Areva acquired Ausra; similar acquisitions are happening throughout the industry, most notably Siemens’ acquisition of Israeli CSP company Solel last year.

“You need to be able to offer utilities a credible performance guarantee. This is the reason that half the large-scale CSP projects announced have failed,” Goyal told Intersolar conference participants this week. “Because what is behind that guarantee? If you’re a start-up, and you guarantee the performance of your technology and it fails, you’ll just go out of business. That’s not a guarantee.”

To deal with utilities’ hesitation and price concerns, Goyal says Areva’s strategy of building so-called “booster” projects at existing plants—smaller CSP installations that take some of the load off an existing power plant—have been successful. The booster plants help reduce emissions and increase a utility’s comfort level with CSP.

Still, he said, utilities are never likely to choose CSP over PV simply because of the storage and stability advantages of the technology.

“At the end of the day, you have to be able to benchmark your offering against not only the lowest-cost solar offering, but the lowest-cost renewable. But, even though utilities have a preference for PV because it’s cheaper, smaller, and easy to deploy rapidly so they can meet their RPS [Renewable Portfolio Standard] requirements, they all say that if CSP can match the cost of PV, they have a preference for CSP.”

That holds true in Europe, where feed-in tariffs and government subsidies make the two comparable, and utilities show a heavy preference for CSP. Analysts and experts are confident that day will come in the United States as well. The U.S. Department of Energy has predicted a 13 percent growth in the CSP market over the next 20 years, and a total installed U.S. capacity of 20GW by 2020.

In other words, the sun isn’t ready to set on solar thermal.

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If Southwestern US states are to meet their renewable energy targets on time, energy experts are urging developers to ditch their fixation on large-scale CSP projects.

By Emma Clarke, UK correspondent

Banging a new drum on the scale of CSP, energy experts now say developers’ focus should be on deploying smaller solar plants on rooftops and on abandoned farms closer to urban centres. But can CSP tap into this interim market for distributed energy, or must it always be limited to utility-scale applications?

Progress of large CSP plants in the southwest US has been held back by long delays that are associated with transmission build-outs. Existing transmission lines are at full capacity, and new lines are hugely expensive, hugely controversial and can take a decade, even more, to complete, says Craig Lewis, founding principal of consultancy RightCycle and the FIT Coalition. “In many cases, the transmission won’t ever get built because it is so wildly opposed by the communities it crosses.”

Building large central station solar plants and transmission lines to remote desert locations also involves major environmental trade-offs in terms of water usage and impact on virgin desert, says Bill Powers, engineer and energy consultant.

On the other hand, wholesale distributed generation, or the 20MW-and-under, distribution-interconnected market segment is “cheaper, faster and avoids all of the environmental controversy,” says Powers. He points to Germany, which has installed between 2-4GW of distributed PV every year, “in conditions more akin to the Arctic from a California standpoint”.

In the future, utility-scale CSP plants will provide the backbone of renewable energy in southwest USA, with hundreds of gigawatts of solar power eventually being shipped to the far corners of the United States, says Lewis. But utilities must not get ahead of themselves and neglect a market segment that can come on scale in the near term.

Any room for CSP?

The technology that is expected to dominate the distributed generation market is photovoltaics (PV). Most agree that CSP will be left to niche applications.

“CSP’s strength is in economies of scale”, says Craig Turchi, from the CSP program at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). CSP only becomes cost competitive with PV once large amounts of energy are produced, or when large numbers of units are manufactured.

CSP developers can’t even save costs in the permitting process by going for smaller-scale developments, Turchi adds. “It is more difficult to get a permit for a large site, but the level of effort in terms of costs are comparable for small sites,” he says. “All these factors push CSP into larger facilities.”

Not all agree, however. Craig Lewis believes there will be “a tremendous amount of innovation” from the CSP community to scale down their technology in order to participate in the wholesale-distributed energy market.

The key, he says, will be innovations in technology that can go through smaller power blocks. The reason companies currently prefer large-scale projects, is because 70MW power blocks are available off-the-shelf.

“But once we achieve scale for lower capacity power blocks, the pricing will come down,” says Lewis. When this happens, CSP technology will be competitive at a smaller scale.

Innovation is already underway. Hawaii-based designer and manufacturer, Sopogy has developed a range of micro CSP solutions that use smaller parabolic trough panels and an organic Rankine cycle (ORC) system, which instead of using steam, uses the temperature difference between fluids in a closed loop to generate electricity.

“In the US we see our technologies being installed on heavy commercial, industrial and utility sectors and on rooftops or ground mounted,” says a Sopogy spokesperson.

Sopogy’s technology, which generates energy in the range of 1-50MW, has eleven solar thermal energy facilities worldwide in applications including process heat, solar air conditioning, roof top deployment and, more recently, power generation.

Parabolic trough manufacturer and solar developer, Albiasa Solar is also scaling down its CSP technology in order to target new markets. To achieve this it is using Ram Power’s Solar Thermal Integrated Cycle (STIC) technology that integrates both ORC and steam turbine technologies into a single power block.

The key benefit of this technology, says Jesse Tippett, managing director of Albiasa, is that it can operate at lower temperatures for both heating and cooling. This means it generates more energy overall so developers can achieve greater economies of scale in smaller plants. The lower temperatures also mean the system can be air cooled to save on water usage.

Albiasa are working with developer Pacific Light and Power on a 10MW CSP plant in Hawaii. Tippett sees further applications in southwest USA for projects in the 10-20MW range. On projects of this size, Tippett says costs can compete with PV electricity.

Another opportunity for CSP technology in the distributed market will be for heat process applications. “Solar thermal offers a cost-effective method compared to regular grid electricity to heat water. On the distributed energy side, you will see a lot more development around that,” says Tippett.

Abengoa Solar’s parabolic trough system, for example, is being used to deliver heating, cooling and humidity control of manufacturing facilities at a Steinway & Sons piano factory in New York, and hot water for a minimum-security federal prison outside Denver.

It is unlikely that CSP technology will lead the market for wholesale distributed generation. But if smaller-scale generation does take hold in the United States, innovation could secure it a stake.

To respond to this article, please write to:

Emma Clarke: emma.jane.clarke@gmail.com

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Rikki Stancich: rstancich@gmail.com

View original story – http://social.csptoday.com/industry-insight/csp-installations-room-scale-down

By Andrew Williams, UK correspondent

Compensating for size, several technologies enable developers of smaller scale CSP systems to capture waste heat and convert it into a cost-effective source of electricity.

Several smaller-scale an modular CSP systems use an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) to recover heat from low-temperature sources.

A good example is UK-based Freepower’s ORC Turbine Generator, a closed-cycle electrical power-generation system driven by external heat sources.  It comprises a generator, directly coupled to a multi-stage turbine driven by high-pressure hot gas (the working fluid), which is heated up and vaporised by the waste heat source before driving the turbine.

Two US products also employ ORC technology.  Sopogy’s MicroCSP system is designed on a low temperature, low pressure scheme, whereas Trimodal’s LTPC engine is a positive displacement device capable of using heat sources as low as 180F / 82 degrees Celsius.

“A positive displacement device is far more efficient and therefore capable of producing mechanical energy at a much lower pressure,” says Marty Johnson, President of Trimodal Group.

France-based Heat2Power’s system does not use an ORC, instead using air as the working medium.  It sees this as an important advantage for CSP since it makes it possible to run in an open thermodynamic cycle, aspirating ambient air and exhausting hot air, thus eliminating dry or liquid cooling requirements and saving on cost and water consumption.

More versatile

Many current offerings are relatively small-scale, which can be an advantage in some situations.  For example, the Freepower system can be located at the point of energy consumption (say, alongside rooftop solar-collectors), removing the need for a grid and eliminating distribution costs.

Other systems, such as Heat2Power’s and Sopogy’s, are modular, opening up the possibility of building them up to utility-scale.  However, the ideal scale is likely to vary between applications.

“In the case of solar absorption cooling, the technology is ideally [suited] to rooftop-installations, [whereas] for process heat system sizes can be as small as several collectors to several hundred collectors.  In power generation, the technology is best suited to utility-scale ground-mounted applications,” says Darren Kimura, President & CEO of Sopogy.

Trimodal’s system differs because it is designed for commercial or utility-scale.  Their current unit is a 100kw system, sufficient to power about 60-80 ‘US-sized’ homes.  They have recently finished engineering a second 250kw unit and expect to rapidly scale-up to larger-sized 250kw, 500kw, 1MW, 2.5MW, and 5MW modules.

“The technology could potentially be scaled to volumes above 5MW, but we feel that it will be most efficient to construct and install in those sizes,” says Johnson.

Niche markets

Although initially slated for automotive applications, Heat2Power soon considered its concept for other uses and are now paying ‘strong attention’ to the CSP sector.

“It makes more sense to run a heat engine 12-15 hours per day on concentrated sunlight that it does for about an hour per day in a car”, says Managing Director, Randolph Toom.

“We see several target-markets.  But as the technology [is] small, it fills the gap between Stirling engines and steam/gas turbines. This gap will become more and more important in decentralized power-generation, and in countries where the grid is not yet available or in poor condition, it can become a life-changer”, he adds.

Sopogy’s focus is to expand into new and emerging solar power markets between 1-50mw and substantially reduce costs.  However, given the larger size of their system, Trimodal’s target CSP markets are primarily in large commercial and utility-scale solar-thermal projects.

Cost efficient

Is this the breakthrough technology that could drive down cooling costs and boost efficiency for utility-scale projects?  “Most definitely”, says Johnson, “we would be able to add capacity from their waste heat and have a big impact on cooling costs.”

However, size may not be the only important factor in driving down costs.  As Toom highlights, generators that run 24 hours a day are great for rapid returns on investment.

“In CSP applications, we see rooftops becoming more important because energy reflected by mirrors isn’t heating up the building, which in turn requires less cooling capacity.  In my opinion, factories, shopping malls and large office buildings in sunny countries should always be equipped with CSP”, he says.

However, does the emergence of waste heat capture technology undermine current views that the optimal size for CSP is upward of 100mw?  At this stage it’s difficult to tell, since the optimal sizing of projects depends on many factors, including grid-access and the availability of land and local water resources.

“I think that at the end of the day the question will not be ‘what is the optimal size of CSP?’ but rather ‘what size CSP do I want?’ Since the market in not yet mature, and neither are some CSP technologies, we will see the question coming back and being answered differently according to local conditions, politics, presence of a reliable grid, local cost of maintenance and so on,” says Toom.

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Andrew Williams: TheGreenExpert@btinternet.com

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View original story – http://social.csptoday.com/industry-insight/waste-not-maximising-mileage-csp-systems

The European energy commissioner recently announced that Europe could draw clean energy from solar panels constructed in the Saharan desert within five years, half the initial 10-year estimate. The series of solar projects in Northern Africa known as Desertec are funded with the help of the EU and some European companies, in the hope that the EU will meet its target of generating 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

The latest statistics from Europe’s Energy Portal show that in 2006 the EU as a whole produced 9.2 percent of its energy from renewable sources, however the production of renewable energy and the target EU members hope to meet by 2020 varies from country to country. For example Malta, which produced 0 percent of its energy through renewable resources in 2006, aims to meet a target of 10 percent by 2020, while the Czech Republic which produced 6.5 percent of its energy from renewable sources in 2006 aims to increase this to 13 percent by 2020.

Solar technology could also soon become practical on a smaller scale, being used in households in order to reduce individual carbon footprints and increase domestic reliance on renewable energy. Konarka technologies have been developing thin film photovoltaic for nine years and are currently in partnership with Arch Aluminum and Glass in an effort to produce solar technology that could be used in home fittings such as curtains or walls thereby reducing household reliance on fossil fuels. The cells under development can store and reuse light from lightbulbs as well as the sun and are made of recycled materials.

Other companies, such as Solar Technologies FZE, are also hoping to develop solar panels for use in private accommodation. Technology in small-scale architecture has been in development for several years and Hawaii-based company Sopogy released commercially available solar technology for rooftop installations in 2009.

www.desertec.org

http://sopogy.com

http://www.konarka.com

Source: The Independent

Forty under 40 Class of 2010

Pacific Business News (Honolulu)

As general counsel, Pamela Ann Joe guides her venture-backed technology company through the many legal and financial issues that challenge the alternative-energy industry.

She also is a guiding force in the industry. She was a member of a legislative working group that developed alternative-energy initiatives for the state. And she represents the sole concentrating solar power stakeholder in an ongoing effort to develop guidelines for the state’s Feed-in-Tariff Renewable Energy Incentive Program.

Outside of work, Joe provides legal services to startup business and nonprofits either pro bono or at reduced cost. She also volunteers with the Hawaiian Humane Society, Aloha United Way and the Kam Society, a Chinese cultural organization.

At work, she encourages her co-workers to reduce their impact on the environment. One such initiative is “Fossil Fuel Free Fridays,” when employees are encouraged to find alternative means of traveling to and from work rather than using their cars.

Read more: Technology company’s attorney fights on behalf of alternative energy – Pacific Business News (Honolulu)

Hawaii is leveraging its most abundant resources — sun and sea. The 45 tenants at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority are developing applications in aquaculture, renewable energy, and marine biotechnology. Who gets in:Innovative start-ups nationwide.Breakout company: Sopogy has raised nearly $20 million for development of its micro-solar panels.

Click map to see the original, interactive version

Source: Inc.

15 April 2010 — Three new concentrating solar power (CSP) facilities came online in the United States in 2009, the third year in the past four such facilities were added following 15 years of inactivity.

The 5 MWac Sierra SunTower from eSolar, the 2 MWac Holaniku trough from Sopogy and the 5 MWac Kimberlina linear Fresnel system from Areva Solar (formerly Ausra) came online during 2009. The Sierra SunTower is the first power tower operating in the U.S. in a decade and Holaniku is the first CSP facility to come online in Hawaii.

The 2009 CSP market summary was released April 15 by the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Also last year, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced two initiatives to speed the development of solar energy on public lands. First, four Renewable Energy Coordination Offices were established across the west (in California, Nevada, Wyoming and Arizona), along with renewable energy teams in five other offices. Second, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) identified 14 solar energy projects that were in position to qualify for stimulus-related funding, if permitted during 2010. BLM and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have focused their resources on getting these “fast-track” projects through the permitting process so they can commence construction by Dec.31, 2010.

The trade association said the United States now has 432 MW of operational CSP plants in commercial production (as of March 2010), making it the world leader in installed CSP. At least three additional CSP facilities are likely to come online in 2010: a 2 MWac Stirling dish installation in Phoenix, Ariz., a 4 MWth trough plant displacing coal-fired generation in Grand Junction, Colo. and the 75 MW Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center hybrid trough in Martin County, Fla.

Sopogy, Inc. has partnered with Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida to showcase its SopoNova solar panels. The project, developed by STG International, has been designed to be a model for cost-effective, stand alone solar power solutions for health clinics in Africa.

According to the company, the MicroCSP system generates solar energy by reflecting the sun’s energy from mirrors into a receiver tube, heating a transfer fluid to create steam. The steam then spins a turbine that drives a generator and produces electricity. The system also includes storage for use on cloudy and rainy days.

“A particularly important breakthrough has been Sopogy’s development of smaller scale parabolic trough collectors that can be built at a lower cost, using commonly available manufacturing facilities and conventional materials,” says Tal Ziv, VP of Operations at Sopogy. “Not only can our modules be produced locally, but our collectors can also be manufactured anywhere in the world.”

One of the features that makes the system unique is that it combines both solar energy to produce electricity and hot water. This system will provide three kilowatts of electricity, enough to power a health clinic that sees up to 100 patients a day as well as produce up to 300 litres of hot water for clinic use.

“This project exemplifies the efforts of organizations committed to environmental sustainability,” said Darren T. Kimura, CEO of Sopogy. “Sopogy is proud to focus on the triple bottom line using our technology to create local jobs, generating green energy, while staying focused on our business.”