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About my Blog -
Lost & Found
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I found this article eSolar plugs solar plant into California grid about a new solar technology development. It's a perfect example of how the current software trend is going inside every possible place, and how it changes the whole perspective.
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eSolar has a technique to concentrate sunlight, using mirrors, into a "power tower" to make steam, which is converted into electricity through a turbine.
eSolar breaks new ground:
- eSolar's plant is the first to use a single tower
- They broken up their mirrored troughs into smaller bits
- They have 24,000 individual mirrors, all pointing in slightly different directions to point at one spot
- They manage each individual mirror with software
- They're "basically making a dynamic parabola in software"
- Each mirror has "a $2 microprocessor"...."every mirror that is tracking the sun during the day has its own computer" ...·It's a 16-bit microprocessor with eight I/O ports. It's like an IBM AT (PC) in every mirror"
- There are 135 people in the company --100 are in engineering, 35 are out running power plants, half the (engineering people) are in the software group
As a consequence of the technology, they innovate the solar energy business:
- eSolar can adapt the location to the available land: smaller-piece parcels of land
- They don't need government permission, and buy private land
- Don't have to do environmental impact studies
- Also, they are buying land specifically adjacent to transmission lines (don't have to install new transmission lines)
- Projects work economically at $100 million scale (so they pay with cash)
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From my point of view, this is a the little revolution, not the big one that appears on the newspapers. It's changing the economy, almost unnoticed.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 07 August 2009 11:45 )
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