From New Atlas:
Mining giant Rio Tinto has announced it's going to install a pilot version of Heliogen's high-temperature "solar refinery" at a Californian boron mine, supplying clean energy as well as heat for industrial processes, with operations expected to start in 2022.
Heliogen's technology is an AI-enhanced version of a concentrating solar thermal generator; a huge array of mirrors surrounding a tall tower, each of which tracks the Sun's position in the sky and tilts itself to perfectly reflect the sunlight onto a collector in the top of the tower.
With a large number of these mirrors – potentially thousands, capturing sunlight across a large spread of land and focusing it all on one spot – the collector gets extremely hot. In 2019, Heliogen's demo plant in Lancaster, California, recorded temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C (1,832 °F), using a relatively small field of AI-guided mirrors, and the company is now talking about temperatures over 1,800 °C (3,272 °F).....
....MUCH MORE
See, blot out the sun, don't blot out the sun, either way Bill's doin' okay.
Previously:November 2019
"Company backed by Bill Gates claims solar breakthrough, looks to replace fossil fuels in industrial plants"
Always temper enthusiasm with knowlege of the difficulties in scaling up, especially when the word 'breakthrough' is used. That said, good on Gates for actually putting the money down on this and a half-dozen other approaches....
