FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions

On this page, we've gathered together questions that we've received through email or have been asked by the media and sorted them into the topics listed below. So, if you have a question about…

• Solar Energy (in general)
• Our Technology
• Our System
• Things Financial (cost/investment/etc.)

…please click on the appropriate topic and read the Q&As to see if your question has already been answered BEFORE blasting an email out to us. If your question isn't here (or you need more information), by all means, feel free to contact us.

Solar Energy (in general)

Electric power plants produced 17,320 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2005. In 2030, the world is projected to need about 33,264 TWh—nearly double the amount of 2005. (Source: 2008 EIA International Energy Outlook Report.)

The amount of sunlight that hits the Earth's surface in one hour is enough to power the entire world for a year.

One solar power plant, using Cool Earth's technology, covering 150 miles by 150 miles, would generate enough energy to meet all the electrical needs of the United States through 2030.

Our Technology

Much like using a magnifying glass to concentrate light, concentrated solar systems use lenses or reflectors to concentrate sunlight onto highly efficient solar cells. By concentrating the light onto a single high efficiency cell, the technology vastly reduces the amount of traditional solar cell area needed to produce electricity. CPV systems generate the same amount of electricity as traditional flat-panel PV systems while using up to 300 to 400 times less solar cell material.

Our solution has two main advantages. First, our CPV technology addresses the limited availability and cost fluctuations of solar cells. Second, our innovative use of reflective thin films to concentrate the sunlight reduces by an order of magnitude the amount of material and the weight required for a CPV system. The result is a solution that generates electricity at a price competitive with that of traditional, fossil-fueled power plants.

The plastic film we use (PET) is a high-strength, non-toxic, extended- temperature polymer that can be recycled and re-purposed into structural and non-structural building-construction elements. It's true that all plastics come from oil, including PET. However, the current global production of plastic PET film is 4.9 billion pounds per year—less than 1 percent of the entire plastics market, which itself represents only about 7 to 9 percent of all the oil pulled out of the ground annually. If one year's worth of PET film were used to make our concentrators, we could generate enough electricity annually to supply about 35 percent of global demand.

In a comparison of the full life cycle of one of our power plants to other solar concentrating technologies, producing our plastic consumes less energy and releases less greenhouse gases (GHGs). Looking only at the solar collecting/concentrating surface, a similar concentrator made of 0.04-inch-thick aluminum would weigh approximately 40 pounds. Replacing our films annually for 30 years still results in seven times less GHGs being emitted and four times less energy being used in the manufacture of the concentrating surface. (These results were generated using this calculator.)

Our web site has all of the information that is publicly available. We maintain and update this information regularly, so please feel free to continue to check our progress online.

Our System

Our system works like a conventional concentrated photovoltaic cell (CPV) system, but we take an unconventional approach to forming and pointing our mirrors. Instead of using rigid aluminum or glass structures to focus light, we use metallized plastic films. And, instead of using ribs, trusswork, or material heft to maintain the mirror shape, we use active inflation air. Our concentrators are firmly attached to a tracking system to track the daily and seasonal passage of the Sun. We also actively water cool our photovoltaic cells to remove heat in contrast to the large, material-intensive heat spreaders and sinks used by most other CPV companies.

Serendipitously, inflation air allows us to make an effective concentrator from nothing but thin clear and reflective plastic films bonded to each other like a conventional foil balloon. The inflated structure is lightweight, strong enough to survive high winds, and designed so the concentrator can produce electricity in winds up to 40 mph. We optimize the optical properties of the balloon by actively controlling its inflation. The balloon also forms a protective barrier around our PV cell.

The amount of electricity generated by our systems is already highly correlated to peak load. This means the electricity is immediately used, so storage is not an issue. Taking the larger view, solar presently serves less than 1 percent of the world's energy needs. Solar needs to be 20 or 30 percent before storage is a significant concern.

Our system can only be installed on the ground. We are currently in the prototype and pilot plant stages, but after our system is fully certified, we plan to make it available for commercial and industrial use.

Things Financial (cost/investment/etc.)

We don't sell our products or systems to third parties but use the technology to build solar power plants that we run and operate. The energy we produce will be sold to utilities.

Cool Earth Solar is a privately held company, and we are not seeking additional investors at this time.

We are currently looking for parcels of land at least 100 acres in size and located in the U.S. Southwest. If you are interested in either leasing or selling your property to Cool Earth, we look forward to hearing from you.

We are negotiating with electrical utilities for the sale of energy from our solar power plants. Our goal is to provide clean, renewable, solar-power electricity at costs competitive with current fossil-fuel-based sources of grid power.

We are presently focused on our domestic power plant installations and expect to pursue the international market sometime in 2011.

FAQ II: Frequently Audible Questions, Too

For your listening pleasure and edification, this section has Q&As in audio format extracted from various interviews. Each audio clip is also accompanied by a short non-audio (i.e., written) summary of the question and answer.

Excerpts from CEO Rob Lamkin's interview with Sterling D. Allan of Free Energy Now radio, recorded August 9, 2008.

The name was originally chosen by the company's founder and key technology inventor, Dr. Eric Cummings. Our technology seeks to directly address and resolve the world's energy crisis, of which global warming is an important aspect. Hence, our goal to create a "cool earth."

Cool Earth has developed a breakthrough solar technology that works TODAY and could be developed on a large enough scale to directly address the energy crisis. At the core of our technology is our patented solar concentrator, made of thin film plastic and inflated with air.

We at Cool Earth were so pleased to hear that challenge go out. To get to those percentages in that timeframe, you need technologies that can scale and scale fast. We see Cool Earth technology as a key solar technology, maybe the only one that can scale to these levels in such a short number of years.

Yes, that's what's exciting about Cool Earth technology. We've designed our system to rely on cheap, readily available commodity materials like wood, stamped-steel galvanized parts, plastic parts, mylar. That's key to being able to roll out our technology quickly and scale up. Scaling to a couple of megawatts or even gigawatts won't even move the needle much less solve the energy problem. Our technology was developed to have a real impact on today's energy problem.

We actively manage the amount of air (and hence the pressure) inside the concentrator to maintain the proper optical shape of the concentrator. It's important to us to control the shape because that determines the focal point and the amount of concentrated sunlight that reaches the photovoltaic cell.

Right now, solar is serving less than 1 percent of the world's energy needs. Solar needs to be 20 or 30 percent before storage is a concern. That's a problem we should look forward to. The real critical issue for today is, we need more solar, more wind, now.

When we are installing plants "at scale" in a year or two, we believe we'll be at a price point of a dollar a watt. To give that some context: a typical flat-panel PV system on a resident rooftop is about seven to eight dollars a watt.

At a dollar a watt, we're competing very favorably with natural gas, but we're not cheaper than coal—yet. Given that coal plants are the ones producing most of the emissions, coal is the big target, the price point we need to get to as soon as we can.

We're not limited to a few narrow locations. We can deploy in farmland, rolling hills, all kinds of terrain. We don't need a thousand acres of perfectly flat land in the desert in order to deploy our technology. Because our technology is so modular, we have more opportunity and many more possible locations for siting our 10-megawatt plants compared to other solar technologies.

Initially, we're focused on building utility-scale power plants that can provide 10 to 30 megawatts—enough to power a small city. Longer term, we want to build smaller plants "off grid" for rural, developing areas. We very much want to eventually deploy our technology not just in large-load centers in developed countries, but also in the "poorest of the poor" areas that have no electricity.