Wkue Solar Energy Showdown Heats Up Again in 2019

New York (CNN Concern)A secretive startup backed by Bill Gates has achieved a solar breakthrough aimed at saving the planet.

Heliogen, a clean free energy company that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, said it has discovered a manner to apply artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme rut above ane,000 degrees Celsius.

Substantially, Heliogen created a solar oven — 1 capable of reaching temperatures that are roughly a quarter of what you'd observe on the surface of the sun.

The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar free energy tin can exist used to create the extreme estrus required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free sunlight can supercede fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution.

"Nosotros are rolling out technology that can beat the toll of fossil fuels and too not make the CO2 emissions," Bill Gross, Heliogen's founder and CEO, told CNN Business organization. "And that's actually the holy grail."

Heliogen, which is likewise backed past billionaire Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Shortly-Shiong, believes the patented technology will exist able to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from manufacture. Cement, for instance, accounts for 7% of global CO2 emissions, according to the International Free energy Agency.

"Bill and the squad take truly at present harnessed the sun," Presently-Shiong, who also sits on the Heliogen lath, told CNN Business organisation. "The potential to humankind is enormous. ... The potential to business organisation is unfathomable."

Unlike traditional solar power, which uses rooftop panels to capture the free energy from the lord's day, Heliogen is improving on what'due south known as concentrated solar power. This technology, which uses mirrors to reflect the sun to a unmarried point, is non new.

Concentrated solar has been used in the past to produce electricity and, in some limited fashion, to create heat for industry. Information technology'south even used in Oman to provide the ability 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.

"You've ended up with technologies that can't really deliver super-heated systems," said Olav Junttila, a partner at Greentech Capital Advisors, a clean energy investment bank that has advised concentrated solar companies in the past.

Using bogus intelligence to solve the climate crunch

That means renewable energy has not all the same disrupted industrial processes such as cement and steelmaking. And that's a problem considering the world has an insatiable appetite for those materials. Cement, for instance, is used to brand the physical required to build homes, hospitals and schools. These industries are responsible for more than a fifth of global emissions, according to the EPA.

That's why the potential of Los Angeles-based Heliogen attracted investment from Gates, the Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder who recently surpassed Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos equally the world's richest person.

"I'm pleased to accept been an early backer of Neb Gross's novel solar concentration technology," Gates said in a statement. "Its capacity to reach the high temperatures required for these processes is a promising development in the quest to ane solar day supercede fossil fuel."

While other concentrated solar companies attacked this temperature problem by adding steel to brand the engineering science stiffer and sturdier, Heliogen and its team of scientists and engineers turned to artificial intelligence.

Heliogen uses computer vision software, automatic edge detection and other sophisticated engineering to train a field of mirrors to reflect solar beams to one unmarried spot.

"If yous accept a thousand mirrors and accept them marshal exactly to a unmarried bespeak, you lot tin attain extremely, extremely high temperatures," Gross said, who added that Heliogen made its quantum on the first day information technology turned its institute on.

Heliogen said information technology is generating so much heat that its engineering science could somewhen be used to create clean hydrogen at scale. That carbon-free hydrogen could then be turned into a fuel for trucks and airplanes.

"If you tin make hydrogen that'south greenish, that's a gamechanger," said Gross. "Long term, we want to be the green hydrogen visitor."

'No-brainer'

For now, Heliogen is squarely focused on solar. I problem with solar is that the sun doesn't e'er shine, yet industrial companies like cement makers have a constant need for heat. Heliogen said it would solve that issue by relying on storage systems that tin can hold the solar energy for rainy days.

Now that it has made this breakthrough, Heliogen will focus on demonstrating how the applied science tin be used in a large-calibration application, such every bit making cement.

"We're in a race. We just want to scale every bit fast equally possible," said Gross.

Afterward the large-scale application, Shortly-Shiong said Heliogen would likely be ready to go public.

In the meantime, Heliogen will crave a healthy dose of capital to calibration and information technology's working with investors on a private round of funding. Soon-Shiong signaled he plans to invest more in Heliogen. Heliogen declined to provide data on how much money it has raised so far.

"This is an existential effect for your children, for my children and our grandchildren," Presently-Shiong said.

Heliogen's biggest claiming will be convincing industrial companies using fossil fuels to brand the investment required to switch over. Gross said the company has been talking to potential customers privately and plans to soon announce its first customers.

"If we get to a cement company and say we'll give you lot greenish rut, no CO2, only we'll besides save you lot money, then it becomes a no-brainer," said Gross.

Its biggest selling point is the fact that, unlike fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, sunlight is free. And Heliogen argues its technology is already economical against fossil fuels considering of its reliance on AI.

"The only way to compete is to be extremely clever in how you use your materials. And by using software, we're able to do that," Gross said.

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Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/19/business/heliogen-solar-energy-bill-gates/index.html?linkId=77334792

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