Get Energy Smart! NOW!

One of the exciting things nowadays is that there are so many exciting developments in the energy arena, many of them suggesting the promise of a breakthrough that could help change the world to something better. Sweden’s Global Sun Engineering is pursuing just such an opportunity. Their Matarenki Light is a tracking system, with mirrors concentrating the sun’s power on photovoltaiic cells. One of the challenges with CPV (concentrated photovoltaiics) is the heating of the cells. Problems can create opportunities. The cooling system is, in essence, a solar hot water system. Thus, the Matarenki Light will provide both electricity and hot water.

The Matarenki Light is intriguing for a number of reasons, beyond the combined electricity / hot water production system. The claimed design feature is also ease of installation, with a six-inch (150 mm) tube to be anchored to the ground or attached to a structure (house). (To be honest, the 290 kilos (638 lbs) seems a bit of a heavy load to get onto a suburban roof.) In essence, when ready for shipping, the entire system looks to be shippable as one piece (or as an easy kit for assembly?) to then be hooked to electrical lines and water pipes.

While interesting, the Matarenki Light 5.3 (currently testing system) is interesting but unlikely more than an auxiliary system for most households. Global Sun Engineering is offering up five theoretical annual electricity and heat (hot water) production levels: Santa Barbara, California; Graz, Austria; Brisbane, Australia; Napoli, Italy; and Sevilla, Spain. Santa Barbara is the most productive location. The Matarenki Light 5.3, they claim, would provide 1014 kWh of electricity per year and 7193 kWh of heat. Thus, at a peak production location, the Matarenki Light 5.3 would, annually, provide just a little more than the 920 kWh average monthly American household electricity use (2006). When it comes to hot water, the Matarenki Light 5.3 offers the potential of meeting requirements as the annual household demand is 5900 kWh per year.

Thus, writ large, the Matarenki seems to offer the potential for meeting (or beating) the typical household solar hot water heating system while producing perhaps ten percent of the household electrical demand. The question will be price. Global Sun Engineering claims that “our solution deliver electricity and heat at half the cost for the end customer”. That suggests a price point. If they can install their system for, for example, the price of existing solar thermal systems, the electricity production becomes icing on the cake and they have a winning solution. Guess it is time to wait for the price sheets to come out.