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Convert Oil Wells to Solve the Solar Storage Problem

Cars That Think

One of the main impediments to harnessing solar energy is storage. Solar batteries work as a short-term solution, but not when it comes to long-term storage or to power, say, an entire city. Solar energy and oil wells might sound like an odd combination, but the principle is similar to how geothermal energy would be harnessed.

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DOE awards $56M to 21 concentrating solar power projects; $8M for reducing soft costs of rooftop PV systems

Green Car Congress

The US Department of Energy (DOE) will award $56 million over three years—subject to congressional appropriations—for 21 total projects to further advance advanced concentrating solar power technologies (CSP). CSP awards. These systems can be combined with existing fossil-fuel plants to allow for flexible power generation.

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Thermal Solar Goes Where PVs Can’t

Cars That Think

Global solar energy supplies are growing rapidly, with nearly 10 times as much solar capacity installed today as there was a decade ago. But even as the glossy rectangles become increasingly cheaper and ubiquitous, solar PV alone can't solve the nagging question: What to do when the sun isn't shining?

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Heliostat Consortium announces 7 projects to receive combined $3.5M in funding; DOE launches Heliostat Prize

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The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia National Laboratories, co-leads of the Heliostat Consortium , announced seven awardees from a request for proposals (RFP) aimed at achieving DOE’s goals for heliostat cost reduction, sustained multifaceted innovation, and improved solar field performance.

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Thermal Solar Goes Where PVs Can’t

Cars That Think

Global solar energy supplies are growing rapidly, with nearly 10 times as much solar capacity installed today as there was a decade ago. But even as the glossy rectangles become increasingly cheaper and ubiquitous, solar PV alone can't solve the nagging question: What to do when the sun isn't shining?

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Stanford study quantifies energetic costs of grid-scale energy storage over time; current batteries the worst performers; the need to improve cycle life by 3-10x

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Benson from Stanford University and Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) has quantified the energetic costs of 7 different grid-scale energy storage technologies over time. To quantify the long-term energetic costs, Barnhart and Benson came up with a new mathematical formula they dubbed ESOI, or energy stored on investment.

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OSU hybrid “solar battery” uses photo-assisted charging to improve performance of Li-air batteries; “negative overpotential”

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The basic concept of the integrated solar battery is to use the contribution of the photovoltage to reduce greatly the charging overpotential caused by the difficulty in efficiently electrochemically decomposing lithium peroxide (Li 2 O 2 ), the discharge product formed on the oxygen electrode. —Yu et al.

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