Francie Diep reports on a creative way to increase the efficiency and bring down the cost of solar power:
Researchers at companies and universities in Switzerland are developing a parabolic solar energy-capturing dish that they hope will be cheaper than current panels and be able to use some of the heat it captures, too: The heat goes into a desalination system that turns salt water into potable water.
Meanwhile, the DoE’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is trying a more conventional combination:
[They have] developed a method of combining solar energy into the natural gas production process to produce cleaner energy output with the same fossil fuel input. Put simply, natural gas power plants will soon be able to produce more electricity while using the same amount of natural gas. … Power plants that use this technology could be considered hybrid fuel power plants, opening a door to a whole new type of energy generation.
(Video: A timelapse of three years of images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory)
The Dish 