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The technology began on these tropical islands, and now it’s come back home to roost, but during a nice way.

On Dec. ten, the Massive Island can power up a four-acre solar farm primarily based on Sopogy technology, that was spun off as Keahole Solar Power LLC to develop the project.

Located on Honolulu, Sopogy’s 500-kilowatt concentrating solar array, that is more efficient than solar photovoltaic systems, will deliver enough electricity to the Big Island’s power grid to serve 250 homes, in line with state energy agency estimates.

This amount can help prevent 808 metric loads of carbon dioxide from oil-burning power plants (for which Hawaii is justly infamous), that is the identical as preserving almost eight acres of forest, planting 20,176 trees, or eliminating 154 cars from the road. In 2007, Hawaii’s generation combine stood at 68.4-percent oil, and 12.5 % coal, with only 4.5-p.c delivered from renewable resources like solar, wind, geothermal and biomass.

Sopogy’s four-acre solar farm, comprised of one,000 collectors concerning 12 feet long and 5 feet wide, will conjointly eliminate the necessity to buy a pair of,000 barrels of oil, a development that state energy administrator Ted Peck called “exciting”.

The technology itself relies on troughs, or 0.5-barrel-formed solar collectors, which catch, mirror and concentrate the sun’s energy on a central collection bar. The system will head liquids up to 400 degrees (Fahrenheit), and the heat from the liquid used to supply steam to operate a turbine.

The array is being placed alongside Hawaii’s Natural Energy Laboratory (south of Kona International Airport), but a 44,572-sq.-foot pilot project in July, designed by Sopogy and Helio Dynamics (a concentrating solar manufacturer), underneath the auspices of Southern California Gas (a division of Sempra Energy), proved the technology viable and compared Sopogy’s concentrating solar to larger concentrating trough arrays like Andasol 1 as the “PC size in concentrating solar generation” (vs mainframes).

Sopogy’s collector, originally designed as the SopoFlare™ and destined for the business/industrial rooftop market as a substitute for solar thermal (solar hot water heating) or photovoltaic technologies, was developed at the side of an integrated roof rack mounting system.

All Sopogy’s offerings are based mostly on its MicroCSP™ technology, that will be employed in place of, or hybridized with, power generation systems, chiller (or AC) systems, process heat recovery devices, and even in desalination.

Originally founded in 2002 by Hawaiian-primarily based Energy Industries (an energy product developer) as an energy ideas incubator at the Energy Laboratories site, Sopogy has gone on to become an innovator, offering a product that costs less to manufacture than solar photovoltaic, with concerning twice the efficiency. And, while not as efficient as utility-scale solar thermal collections systems, is less expensive, provides for energy storage at midnight and on cloudy days, and offers the hope that sometime the technology will be offered in residential roof-sized units.

Sopogy is trying ahead to a 50-megawatt project in Spain, and its sister entity, Keahole, is hoping to develop 30 megawatts of concentrating solar thermal throughout the Islands in the next six years.

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