Sos Roofline Systems

The technology began on these tropical islands, and currently it has return home to roost, however in a nice way.

On Dec. 10, the Big Island can power up a four-acre solar farm based on Sopogy technology, that was spun off as Keahole Solar Power LLC to develop the project.

Located on Honolulu, Sopogy’s 500-kilowatt concentrating solar array, which is more economical than solar photovoltaic systems, can deliver enough electricity to the Huge Island’s power grid to serve 250 homes, consistent with state energy agency estimates.

This quantity will facilitate stop 808 metric tons of carbon dioxide from oil-burning power plants (for that Hawaii is justly infamous), that is the identical as preserving virtually eight acres of forest, planting 20,176 trees, or eliminating 154 cars from the road. In 2007, Hawaii’s generation mix stood at 68.4-% oil, and 12.5 percent coal, with only 4.five-p.c delivered from renewable resources like solar, wind, geothermal and biomass.

Sopogy’s four-acre solar farm, comprised of one,000 collectors regarding twelve feet long and 5 feet wide, can additionally eliminate the need to shop for two,000 barrels of oil, a development that state energy administrator Ted Peck called “exciting”.

The technology itself depends on troughs, or half-barrel-formed solar collectors, which catch, replicate and concentrate the sun’s energy on a central assortment bar. The system will head liquids up to 400 degrees (Fahrenheit), and the warmth from the liquid used to provide steam to control a turbine.

The array is being placed alongside Hawaii’s Natural Energy Laboratory (south of Kona International Airport), however a forty four,572-sq.-foot pilot project in July, designed by Sopogy and Helio Dynamics (a concentrating solar manufacturer), below the auspices of Southern California Gas (a division of Sempra Energy), proved the technology viable and compared Sopogy’s concentrating solar to larger concentrating trough arrays like Andasol 1 because the “PC size in concentrating solar generation” (as opposed to mainframes).

Sopogy’s collector, originally designed as the SopoFlare™ and destined for the commercial/industrial rooftop market as an alternative to solar thermal (solar hot water heating) or photovoltaic technologies, was developed along with an integrated roof rack mounting system.

All Sopogy’s offerings are based on its MicroCSP™ technology, which will be used in place of, or hybridized with, power generation systems, chiller (or AC) systems, process heat recovery devices, and even in desalination.

Originally founded in 2002 by Hawaiian-primarily based Energy Industries (an energy product developer) as an energy ideas incubator at the Energy Laboratories website, Sopogy has gone on to become an innovator, offering a product that prices less to manufacture than solar photovoltaic, with about twice the efficiency. And, whereas not as economical as utility-scale solar thermal collections systems, is more cost effective, provides for energy storage at nighttime and on cloudy days, and offers the hope that sometime the technology can be obtainable in residential roof-sized units.

Sopogy is trying ahead to a 50-megawatt project in Spain, and its sister entity, Keahole, is hoping to develop 30 megawatts of concentrating solar thermal throughout the Islands in the subsequent six years.

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