NEWS
IK4-TEKNIKER will be presenting some of its most recent developments in the field of thermoelectric solar energy; the common denominator is about increasing the output of the plants and cutting their operating costs.
IK4-TEKNIKER will for another year be participating in the SolarPACES 2013 conference focussing on the development and marketing of solar energy concentrating systems. This conference is being organised by the International Energy Agency to help to come up with solutions for energy problems worldwide.
In the wake of the success of the last edition in September 2012 and which brought together over 1,000 experts including researchers, scientists and business people from all over the world, Las Vegas (United States) will be hosting the 19th edition of this conference from 17 to 20 September 2013; there will be sessions and meetings on the latest developments in technologies for concentrating solar energy and for chemical energy systems.
At the conference IK4-TEKNIKER's Renewable Energies area will be presenting some of its most recent developments in the field of thermoelectric solar energy; the common denominator is about increasing the output of the plants and cutting their operating costs. At the end of the day, it is about cutting costs in generating electricity.
The Basque R&D centre will be presenting the following papers:
“Fast, compact and precise mirror facet measurement based on autocollimation principle”, which presents a new system currently in the patent application phase for the automatic geometric verification of concentrator mirrors.
“Improvement of solar heat transfer fluid behavior at low temperature by dispersing encapsulated and non encapsulated phase change materials (PCM)”, which will be describing the results obtained in a new generation of heat transfer fluids with fewer problems of freezing and/or degradation at high temperatures.
“MAINBOT – Mobile robots for inspection and maintenance in extensive industrial plants”, which will be presenting the development of robots to inspect solar fields, which is part of the MAINBOT European project.
“A new high sensitivity and low cost solution for the measurement of reflectivity loss due to dust deposition in solar collectors”, which will be displaying a development made in collaboration with the company Microelectrónica MASER: a low-cost system for monitoring, in real time, the level of dirt present in large solar fields.
And “Selective Coatings for New Concepts of Parabolic Trough Collectors”, which will be looking at the developments made in new parabolic trough collector receptors.
It will also be presenting a paper entitled “EASY: An innovative design for cost effective heliostats/solar fields” in which IK4-TEKNIKER and the National Centre for Renewable Energies (CENER) have been working together to develop a new concept of heliostat that could cut the costs of solar fields.
IK4-TEKNIKER and thermoelectric solar energy
Over the last 8 years IK4-TEKNIKER has been looking into the development of thermoelectric solar technology to design new components, to develop and analyse heat transfer fluids and means of storage, and to come up with optical surfaces with enhanced features, among other things.
It is also working to improve plant operation and maintenance, to cut the cost of solar concentrator technology.
The developments scheduled to be presented at the conference reflect some of the achievements it has made over the last year in these fields.
