Cutting Coal Use with Sunshine
Via Technology Review.
Feeding heat from the sun into coal-fired power stations could turn out to be the cheapest way to simultaneously expand the use of solar energy and trim coal plants’ oversize carbon footprints.
At least that’s what the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), a nonprofit organization backed by the electricity industry, is hoping. Last week, the institute launched a nine-month, $640,000 study to pin down the scale of the opportunity and the engineering challenges involved with making these seemingly disparate technologies work together. The study will examine the potential use of solar-thermal technology at a pair of coal-fired power stations, in New Mexico and North Carolina.
Combining solar power with fossil fuels is not a wholly new idea: over half a dozen new and existing natural-gas power stations are being designed or adapted to incorporate solar-thermal technology, which involves capturing heat generated using fields of mirrors and heat-collection tubes.
