14 DAY TRIAL // Chris Huntington, vice president of business development at SkyFuel, announced that the company's new parabolic troughs were made of reflective plastic-coated silver, instead of the usual mirrored glass other power plants throughout the world employ. Tough it may seem to be more expensive at first glance, Huntington says that the overall costs are lower than those involved in building and bringing on-line a regular solar plant.
SkyFuel claims that the prices it paid for the new technology are 25 percent lower than what it would have paid for conventional solar power conversion methods. Its first plant is scheduled to be opened today (Oct. 10th), in Arvada, Colorado, in the presence of governor Bill Rittner, who is to hold a speech at the event. With states the size of California having to respect their 2010 deadline for supplying 20 percent of utilities to major cities from renewable sources, enterprises such as SkyFuel's are very likely to receive massive supply contracts from state authorities.
The basic principle behind a solar powered electrical plant is very simple: heat from the Sun is trapped in parabolic troughs and focused on a special liquid, which then evaporates and drives a propeller tied to an electric generator. The process is only dependent on the amount of sunlight received by the parabolic over the day. It stands to reason that these plants don't work at night, unlike water and coal-powered stations, which can run around the clock.
While water-driven plants still remain the cleanest source of electrical current to date, continued innovations in the field of solar energy could one day provide people with sufficient amounts of energy so as to rival with generators using fossil fuels. Currently, SkyFuel estimates that the price for a kilowatt-hour of electrical energy will be somewhere around 15 cents, but that is still more expensive than energy provided by conventional plants in the country.