Two renewable energy organizations in Colorado released a roadmap for solar thermal industry development over the next 40 years. Cool Energy contributed to the development of this roadmap, and was featured – see page 2 of the body (page 9 of the PDF).
See the roadmap here!
The second unit of our SolarHeart P3 Stirling engine was shipped off by air this week to an evaluation site in Europe. Many congratulations to the great team that made this happen!
On the day before Thanksgiving 2011, the first SolarHeart ™ customer unit shipped out of our facility in Boulder, Colorado. This unit headed to Italy, and if all goes well in test will end up connected with a solar thermal concentrator system in Malta. Many congratulations to the team that worked so hard to bring this idea from concept to reality! A second unit is schedule to ship in two weeks. We have a lot to be thankful for!
Idealab has posted our video on their YouTube channel that ends with the first run of a total SolarFlow System. Watch it here!
On June 30, Idealab and Cool Energy completed a partnership agreement that includes a substantial equity investment from Idealab, and brings Cool Energy into the Idealab network of companies.
“Cool Energy’s technology is in a sweet spot for clean energy, enabling low-temperature waste heat recovery, and novel solar and biomass systems for distributed power generation,” said Bill Gross, Chairman and CEO of Idealab. “We are thrilled to be involved with a company that has the potential to make a real difference in the world.”
We at Cool Energy are very excited to work with a group as visionary as Idealab, and to incorporate the business wisdom of Bill Gross and his team into our biz dev planning process.
I will let others speak to this issue. Comments from two deep energy/environmental thinkers below.
George Monbiot (pro-nuke):
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/03/21/going-critical/
Amory Lovins (anti-nuke):
http://blog.rmi.org/LearningFromJapansNuclearDisaster
What do you think?
Here is the crew after commissioning the field for the first pilot system in Boulder!
While not directly related to Cool Energy’s on-going progress (the solar field is almost done), I thought Cool Energy friends might be interested in a recent climate change perspective. I came across this hour-long video presentation from a 2009 American Geophysical Union conference, and it was amazing. A journey from the initial formation of Earth to now, including why we have liquid water on the planet and what effect species die-offs have on the temperature of earth. If you have a free hour and enjoy fast-paced humorous science-dense tour-de-forces, I recommend a visit here:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
Enjoy!
Local sustainability visionary Alexia Parks visited the Cool Energy facility a few weeks ago, and we discussed the work we are doing here. She mentioned us in one of her columns in the Huffington Post this week, and you can check it out here. Look for more announcements regarding patent awards and demonstration systems, coming soon!
We learned last week that Cool Energy has been awarded a new grant supplement by the National Science Foundation. This grant provides $100,000 for wear, friction, and life testing of the unique non-metallic self-lubricating piston/cylinder sets used in the SolarHeart(tm) Engine. Cool Energy will use these funds to perform testing on several current and candidate materials for the piston/cylinders, and determine the best combination of low friction and wear resistance for the dynamic seals in the engine. This supplement also extends the duration of the SBIR Phase II grant, allowing an additional 6 months to raise funds to be matched in the Phase IIb supplement – a potential $500,000 match to prospective investors.
