It is a problem that has so far stumped even Google’s brainy engineers – how to generate cheap solar electricity using a small-scale array of mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy.
Now a team at a South African university – led by a former Intel strategic planner – believes they have cracked it. Once they have completed a prototype system in October they have big plans for rolling out the technology.
The idea behind the design – so-called Concentrated Solar Power or CSP – is simple. A field of mirrors on the ground tracks the sun and concentrates its rays on to a central point which heats up. That heat is converted into electricity.
Carvin Claasen, 22, right, holds a heliostat that has just been formed be he and his crew. The Heliostat is a highly spec’ed piece of bent glass, they are breakable and they have rarely been made successfully so small. Shannon Daniels, 21 left, holds the other side to make sure it doesn’t break.Katleho Mabeba, 24 is the foreman of the build team. He is also an idea man. “I love coming up with the new ideas here, we are always learning”.The system is wireless and needs no concrete to be poured, except for the single tower. That makes it movable, cheaper, and much easier to install. On the right the system is pointed by the pyroheliometer, which sends out information to the heliostats about where to focus the suns energy.From left to right, not in the mirrors, stands foreman Katleho Mabeba, 24, Carvin Claasen, 22, and Shannon Daniels, 21. The three have been learning how to manufacture the high end heliostats for the helio 100.Paul Gauche, the Research Group Director stands at the Helio100 installation near Stellenbosch. He says this is just the beginning, they are going to put dozens of these up together in the sunny north of South Africa. Called the Helio 3000, the system is able to be deployed by only two untrained people.Heliostats, or mirrors to concentrate the sun, in a field near Stellenbosch will become of the most affordable, small plug-and play solar solutions in the world if Paul Gauche’ has his way.The Helio100 South African made heliostat technology is built by The Solar Thermal Research Group at Stellenbosch University, and funded by the South African government and foreign energy businesses.
Jeffrey Barbee is a photojournalist and award-winning film producer and director. He works for Global Post, presents the US national TV show Earth Focus for LinkTV and writes and photographs for the Guardian UK. His work also appears in the New York Times, the BBC, NOS Tv Holland, Smithsonian Magazine, RTL News, PBS, CBS, Al Jazeera, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and others.
His 2012 film Creating a Climate For Change won best environmental film at the film festival of Colorado.
He is the Director of The High Cost Of Cheap Gas, a current feature film exposing the global gas industry.
He is the Director of Alliance Earth, a worldwide not-for-profit environmental and scientific reporting initiative and is a board member of the Mezimbite Forest Centre.
3 thoughts on “South African team may have solved solar puzzle even Google couldn’t crack”
Awesome
I would like to be involved in installing these solar heating systems in rural KwaZulu-Natal where the people cannot afford alternative power.
As an education for sustainability specialist I would appreciate being kept informed of developments.