Solar Thermal Biofuel  

PG&E's "Next 100" blog has an interesting post on a combined solar thermal / biomass power plant in California - This is Not Your Grandparents' Renewable Energy Project.

Chalk this up to the "only in California" file - the concepts of traditional renewables and emerging renewables. Thanks to California's natural heritage, PG&E has a long history of utilizing hydroelectric, geothermal and wind resources to meet energy demand.

In the early 1900s, real horse power moved a water wheel in the construction of PG&E's DeSabla hydroelectric power station.Well, as a sign of things to come, enter PG&E's newest renewable energy project with San Joaquin Solar LLC, a subsidiary of Martifer Renewables Electricity LLC.

Through our agreements with San Joaquin Solar, we're adding 106.8 megawatts (MW) of solar thermal-biofuel hybrid power to our energy mix. What's cool about this project is the combination of two renewable resources abundant in California - solar energy and biofuel from the Central Valley - to produce renewable energy around-the-clock, even at night.

Here's how it works: Martifer's hybrid projects combine Luz solar thermal trough technology and steam turbines powered by biomass to produce hybrid solar-biofuel renewable electricity 24/7. Each hybrid project will require 250,000 tons of biofuel annually, which will come from a combination of locally-produced agricultural wastes, green wastes and livestock manure.

Luz solar thermal trough technology. Photo by Luz InternationalThese projects will be located near Coalinga, CA. And for anyone who's driven the I-5 to L.A., you'll have experienced first-hand the abundance of biomass material.

IN A SIGNIFICANT milestone, the foundations for the world's largest solar dish were poured only 48 hours ago at an Australian National University site. Just in time for World Environment Day today, the project is being hailed by a group of renewable energy experts as the first step towards converting Australia's fossil-fuel based economy into a major exporter of "liquid sunshine" - that is methanol - a favourite with some racing car drivers.

A 500-square-metre parabolic dish - that's bigger than an average house block - consisting of 424 mirrored panels will be erected over coming months as a prototype for a solar farm planned for Whyalla, South Australia.

Private company Wizard Power has partnered with the solar thermal boffins at the ANU, led by Keith Lovegrove, to build what they say will be the first renewable energy power station capable of producing electricity around the clock by the end of next year.

Combined with an ammonia-based storage system, the solar thermal concentrator will not only create carbon emission-free base load power, its technology could also be used to one day solve the widening oil crisis and supplant high-earning coal exports, Prof Lovegrove said in Melbourne this week.

"The biggest risk for the Australian economy out of adapting to climate change is not reducing our own emissions, but losing our biggest export when the rest of the world stops buying our coal . . . that exposes us to more risk," Prof Lovegrove said. "It's dead obvious, we have to find a way of exporting energy in greater volumes than our gas resources can produce and with higher value than uranium can generate."

Prof Lovegrove's idea for a "fully sustainable future" would have farmers growing salt water algae - which he says produces about 40 times more biomass than food crops per hectare.

Once harvested the algae would be "gasified" at 700 degrees Celsius in massive pressure cookers powered by energy from solar dishes. The resulting methane gas would be put under another high-pressure industrial process and emerge as methanol.