Heliogen, a solar tech company backed by Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, has announced that it has discovered a means of multiplying the energy from the sun enough to be able to use solar power in such fossil fuel-dependent industries as steel, glass, and cement. The discovery could lead to the replacement of fossil fuels for many industrial applications with solar power.
According to Heliogen's CEO Bill Gross:"We are rolling out technology that can beat the price of fossil fuels and also not make the CO2 emissions. And that's really the holy grail." The technology is based on using artificial intelligence to concentrate sunlight into heat energy of over 1,000 degrees Celsius:
"Unlike traditional solar power, which uses rooftop panels to capture the energy from the sun, Heliogen is improving on what's known as concentrated solar power. This technology, which uses mirrors to reflect the sun to a single point, is not new. Concentrated solar has been used in the past to produce electricity and, in some limited fashion, to create heat for industry. It's even used in Oman to provide the power needed to drill for oil. The problem is that in the past concentrated solar couldn't get temperatures hot enough to make cement and steel." (our emphasis)Heliogen will now focus on demonstrating the technology for application to key industries.
