Solar Thermal Industry Overview

An exceptionally well-researched overview of the worldwide solar thermal heating market came out last month in Renewable Energy World.  Reading between the lines and putting information in this post together with data from the REN21 project, it appears that about 28 million square meters of non-tracking solar thermal collectors were installed in 2007, with about 30-40% of that area being evacuated tube collectors, and the remainder flat-plate collectors and pool heating collectors.

Almost all of the new solar thermal collectors in the world (16 GW – 80%) are installed in China, which indicates the cost-effectiveness of the approach.  Most of the remainder are installed in Europe (2 GW – 10%) and scattered other countries (2GW – 10%).  The United States only adds 0.5% of the world’s solar thermal capacity each year (0.1 GW).  Of the 28 million square meters of solar water heating collectors installed each year, only about 0.15 million are installed in the US.

Looked at another way, these are the rates of solar thermal installation in some interesting markets (in units of  square meters/1000 people):

• World average: 4.2
• EU average: 5.6
• China average: 17.3
• US average: 0.5

We can do better, and we need to.  We can create jobs, save energy, save money, and develop a world leadership in all of the relevant renewable energy technologies, or we can lose out to other countries.   With intelligent policies to incentivize adoption of economical energy saving measures, and to help finance the up-front costs, we can play a part in the 60% worldwide growth in solar thermal last year.  Or we can sit on the sidelines.  You know what our vote is.

Siemens Acquires Solel

This week, Siemens purchased solar thermal giant Solel Solar Systems for $418 million. This purchase of Israel-based Solel Solar Systems will give Siemens as stronger market position in the increasingly hot solar-thermal space. Solel Solar Systems already has over 500 employees and is one of the world´s two leading suppliers of solar receivers, which are key components of so-called parabolic trough power plants. They are one of the world’s two leading suppliers of solar receivers and has been present on the Spanish market since 2006, and is also active in the US market. It produces solar troughs and is involved in the manufacture and installation of solar fields for large scale solar energy production.

We are excited to see such large activity in the solar thermal world, and the benefits for entrepreneurs, investors and the environment can be summed up by a quote this week from a Siemens executive:

“The market for solar thermal energy is highly promising, and vigorous growth is expected…” – René Umlauft

Cool Energy SolarHeart Engine News

Over the last 6 weeks or so we have been testing the latest version of the SolarHeart Engine (Gen 3). It started the first time we put heat to it, and has reached a max output of 1100 Watts of electrical power to date. We are refining the piston/cylinder liner design, and hope to get to our target of 1500 Watts soon!

A first look at the Obama cap and trade program on Grist

An acquaintance of mine, Chaz Teplin of NREL, started a thread on Grist that I found interesting enough to comment on.  A price on carbon is coming, and the external costs of polluting that get tacked onto fossil fuel use will determine if we are serious about avoiding global warming and ocean acidification, or not.

Atlantic Graphics – The World is Spiky

Some very interesting visualizations of population distributions, wealth-generation distributions, and intellectual property development distributions were published by the Atlantic Monthly.  As much as I like what Thomas Freidman stand for these days around renewable energy and support for innovative companies, I never could quite relate to the flat world theory.  This brief article is more in line with my views.

Plots and Charts of Historical Financial Market Data

Some perspective on where we are today in financial history, with great charts, is here.  With the market behavior lately, it’s good to get some perspective.

Concentrating Solar Power Research

A new Department of Energy program has awarded 15 new grants for concentrating solar power storage technologies.  It is great to see the re-birth of R&D in American renewable energy!

Cool Energy in Boulder County Business Report

There was an excellent article on Cool Energy in the Boulder County Business report last Friday, February 6, 2009.  Many thanks to the reporter for getting the story accurate and readable!

New Posting Philosophy & Komatsu Thermoelectric Device

I’m going to try and post more often about our progress at Cool Energy as well as renewable energy issues in general.  In order to do that and still make progress on the important stuff (engine and system performance as well as business development), I am going to be terse in general.  An example:

Komatsu announced general availability of a new thermoelectric power generation device.  While this looks like an improvement over some of the others on the market, a 1KW system would cost over $14,000 for just the thermoelectric components – still very pricey.

Cool Energy Receives NSF Funding

Good news this week on the business front!  The press release.

The funding itself is excellent news, but the additional good news is that the NSF funding comes with another nice bonus: an additional $500K in matching funding for any investment that is raised for further commercialization.

We hope to have  even more good news to announce within a month or so!