Salt Can Time Shift Solar Power

A startup has joined the chorus of solar companies developing technology to concentrate solar power and make it available when the sun isn't shining.

Hamilton Sundstrand has joined with US Renewables Group to start company SolarReserve to commercialize a molten salt storage system developed by Rocketdyne.

The technology uses mirrors to focus solar heat onto a tower that can heats up molten salt that can be released later to create steam to power a turbine.

The concentrating solar power (CSP) technology isn't fully cooked (so to speak) as a high volume energy producer, but the lab results have been so promising that companies including Skyfuel and Solucar Power are also planning to build CSP plants.

This technology avoids the primary limitation of solar power -- that it is by nature intermittent and so can't be called on when needed. If CSP pans out, it could attract a number of utilities in the Southwest US, which has the perfect environment for solar thermal power.