LMSolar

Yes, where are you moving to from GW? We're looking for options...

The article mentions light bulb durability. There was a cartel, the awesomely-named Phoebus Cartel [1] that encouraged its members to reduce the typical operating life of bulbs from 2500 hours to 1000 hours to increase bulb sales.

So the author's list of 'Why Stuff is Bad' should * certainly * include 'lack of anti-trust laws and enforcement'. Rent-seeking, anti-trust, regulatory capture should all be mentioned in this under-thought blog product.

Seriously, not mentioning useful regulation and standards as a countermeasure to the negative trends the author describes seems like willful blindness.

[1] Phoebus Cartel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

A new video from NELHA shows off-grid water tank manufacturing in Kona, Hawaii using concentrated solar heat. With most of the Big Island dependent on rain catchment, tanks are a critical resource - now made inexpensively without fossil fuels.

With the understanding that DIY is great, and this is a super-cool project, etc, we've used this [1] commercial door opener from Omlet (chuckle) with great results. Can be set to open/close at specific times, or manually, or after light/dark with programmed delay. No decapitations so far; auto-opens if there's resistance to opening above a mild threshold. Wifi connected if desired.

[1] https://www.omlet.us/shop/chicken_keeping/automatic_chicken_...

IMHO I also think they erred in going for 'moon-shot' uses of solar thermal energy (hydrogen production, making cement) vs lower-temperature applications like plastic molding etc.

A dramatic decline for a formerly 'hot' solar thermal startup backed by Bill Gates and Bill Gross.

Very useful tool, allowed us to generate enveloping gears easily that were difficult Solidworks and Alibre. Thought the hardware crowd here would find this interesting. (No affiliation, just wanted to get them some visibility after they proved helpful).

For a certain range of indie pop, KCRW's Eclectic24 is great: https://www.kcrw.com/music/shows/eclectic24

I have no inside info re Ivanpah, but we often get folks asking if our H1 heliostat [1] can extend the generation window of an existing PV array, or if they can mount PV on our H1 to extend the working day.

While both 'work' technically, you're still paying to buy and maintain the electro-mechanical system of the heliostat to get an improvement in PV output [2]

So, the active-tracking investment is in competition with the brute-force approach: just buy and install more super-affordable PV panels. e.g. put some oriented for morning light, some for afternoon, etc.

I've heard first-hand that SV VC investors were shocked how fast PV got cheap vs more-complex / active systems like Ivanpah.

If you're optimizing a single PV asset for max output (constrained PV panel supply), active tracking pays off - but in most non-maritime or space applications, it's better just to install more fixed-position PV panels because they are cheap and because supporting a mechanical system can be expensive.

All that said, we think there are huge applications for non-CSP use of heliostats, e.g. for industrial and agricultural heat. [3]

But CSP's usefullness for electricity production is uncertain at best, IMO.

[1] http://www.lm.solar/heliostats/ [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S22131... [3] https://lm.solar/solar-plastic-molding/

I am super late to mention this, but we use sendcutsend also, great results. For 3D work, was surprised not to see https://www.hubs.com/ mentioned - used to be 3DHubs. US and international multi-axis machining, 3d printing, etc. Quite helpful.

[shameless self-promotion] We're building one version of Solarpunk at LightManufacturing. Fun visuals in videos below. Off-grid real-time manufacturing using solar heat, without energy storage, transmission lines, etc. We've operated out of modified shipping containers since day one, molding durable parts used around the world with heliostat arrays. Coworkers include road runners, western fence lizards, and lots of talent out of CalPoly. :)

https://lm.solar/video/videos/

A newsstand was famously the setting for 'The Cricket in Times Square'... sad to think the context lost for some newer readers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cricket_in_Times_Square

Hi Elina - how about adding Garden of Life Fit and other products? (No affiliation with them, just a happy user).

Link: https://www.gardenoflife.com/raw-organic-fit-protein-chocola...

Several comments... Disclaimer, I work in this space.

a) Surprised that on HN no one has commented on the similarities with Heliogen: https://www.heliogen.com/ This US-based company backed by Bill Gates and Bill Gross similarly focuses on high-temperature heliostat applications, e.g. green hydrogen and concrete etc. They even have similar hexagonal-mirror heliostats. b) Why these CSP startups so often focus on moon-shot 'super hard' applications like the above baffles me. There are LOTS of great applications for lower temperature solar thermal systems - which are much easier to build and operate. Our plastic-molding systems are just one example: http://lm.solar c) It's a little odd to be doing CSP in Germany - Heliostats need collimated light (non-diffuse light, e.g. light that casts a shadow) and Germany has pretty low DNI compared to, say, Morocco. I know the article says they plan to deploy commercially to Spain, but even a test system would be super hard to operate with frequent haze, high cloud layers, etc. To be clear, not saying PV-solar is impractical in Germany - PV can harvest diffuse light just fine.

Funny that the photo of the solar tower / target in the article shows an overcast sky! Global Solar Atlas gives annual average DNI of @ 1000 kWh/M2/year at Jülich, which is way low. https://globalsolaratlas.info/detail?c=50.922093,6.361102,11...

I wish them luck, but there are likely more practical, impactful uses for CSP.

PS Re the 'sunlight is free' comments... yes but if your process is very inefficient and/or requires a huge heliostat array then CapEx goes way up (which has to be financed = cost) and then you get into needing automated cleaning robots to keep your array working well (see Ivanpah - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility ), etc.

The cascading effects of moon-shot application => huge CSP system => problems (high CapEx, huge physical sites, permitting problems, need for automated cleaning etc) are exactly why we're working on industrial uses for SMALL heliostat arrays. And why grid-scale CSP (electric generation) systems generally get trounced by PV+battery systems.

In Congo, a hard-fought solar investment shows a possible path forward despite financing challenges.

"A clean energy company wants federal permission to use Arizona's sunshine and water to create carbon-free hydrogen fuel in one of the state’s more stressed rural groundwater basins".

Last year, Americans bought more than one million fully electric cars, trucks and SUVs. Interactive charts show where adoption is strong and where it's lagging.

I've toured our local MRF and was shocked at how good it was at robotic / magnetic separation. Incredibly fast AI trained 'pickers' pulling material off a belt (sorting by visually distinct plastic types, e.g. PET vs opaque plastics, paper, etc), combined with some human labor and magnetic extractors. Very high capture rates for all plastics except films - those remain hard to sort / grab. I was not expecting this level of performance...

NASA is conducting tests on what might be the greatest challenge of a Mars mission: the trauma of isolation. But how many of these simulated missions do we really need to do?