Solar Activity

By dabilendabilen (1256131064|%a, %b %e at %I:%M%p)

Technology

Technology has advanced greatly, more so in the solar thermal area given the nature of that industry, it has become seen as increasingly effective in the public eye hence there has been more capital allocation to the segment.

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One of the primary developments is the solar thermal trough. This trough, seen above, is a large very smooth mirror that is wrapped in a cylindrical shape around a tube, the Dewar Tube, which is the focal point of the mirror. Essentially as the mirror get rays of sun, the rays are concentrated on the tube and heat it up, which heat up the heat transfer fluid inside the tube up until it is hot enough to produce steam that will turn a turbine. In order to make these troughs effective, many of them are lined up in a large fields and aggregate to make reasonable sized outputs. This technology is currently 60%-80%.

Projects

Spain has long been the global leader in green energy project development, focusing on wind and especially solar energy. Given the geographic region of Spain, it has lots of solar exposure year round which make it an ideal land to cultivate solar energy. Additionally, the government has been very supportive of the technologies within this industry, which has provided increased incentive.

With that said, this wiki looks to focus on solar development and its specific application within the US. Recently solar energy has found itself to be a more reasonable and reliable investment and hence has attracted a lot of interest from VC/PE and now even IB firms. In California alone there is currently 10,000 MW of projects underway or in the final stages of financing, with an additional 6,000 MW of projects in the pipeline.1

Government Stimulus

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The US government has been in a phase of major change, and that rings very true in the energy world. The Department of Energy (DOE) has been allocated a multi-billion dollar budget to help sponsor or aid many projects that have a full business model developed yet finding difficulty in setting up financing. Though it is difficult to get DOE funding approved, if your business is legitimate with sound future projections then DOE will give you more serious consideration where other weary investors might not.

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