Power plants burn coal, sunshine

摘要

With turbines already in place, the idea is to surround a coalfired plant with solar reflectors that supplement the heat and steam that course through the system. The Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit organization backed by the electricity industry, launched a nine-month, dollar640,000 study to pin down the scale of the opportunity and the engineering challenges involved with making these seemingly disparate technologies work together. The study will examine the potential use of solar-thermal technology at a pair of coalfired power stations, in New Mexico and North Carolina.