Sunvapor breakthrough Green Solar Collector Wins US Department of Energy SunShot Initiative Award
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office focuses on achieving the goals of the SunShot Initiative, which seeks to make solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of electricity by the end of the decade.
The amount of solar energy in the United States has grown nearly 26-fold since 2008.
By the end of the first quarter of 2016, the U.S. had an estimated 29.3 gigawatts (GW) of solar installed, enough to power the equivalent of 5.7 million average American homes, states SunShot-Initiative.
Images Credit: Sunvapor
Sunvapor, a pioneering developer of solar energy for industrial process heat and steam is setting the world record for solar concentration, the first solar end-pumped laser, the first true volumetric receiver demonstrated at NREL, and the first Fresnel molten salt collector demonstrated at Sandia.
It has now been announced that it is the recipient of a $2.2 million total cooperative award from the U. S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative for Green Solar Collector.
Example concept design using artificial intelligence (PRNewsFoto/Sunvapor, Inc.)
The award will enable Sunvapor to reduce the cost of concentrating solar collectors while greening the supply chain.
“This award will help us demonstrate that the cost of solar can be drastically cut by taking advantage of renewable fiber-reinforced composite materials,” said Dr. Philip Gleckman, Sunvapor’s CEO.
Sunvapor is expert in Concentrated Solar Thermal technology and has a unique business model where they sell at prices lower than fossil fuel.
The green solar collector reduces the material and assembly costs of traditional parabolic trough collectors by using a special grade of wood as the structural material, reports SunShot-Initiative.
It also utilizes a different structure for the collector with trusses on the concave side of the parabola, which minimizes the amount of material needed to achieve the required stiffness and reduces the number of assembly fixtures and process steps in construction. (Source: Sunvapor)
