Heliogen targets 1500°C solar thermal

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Odeillo_solar_furnace" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Odeillo_solar_furnace</a><p>&quot;started operating in 1970&quot;, &quot;Temperatures above 3,500 °C (6,330 °F) can be obtained in a few seconds&quot;.<p>See also <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Solar_furnace" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Solar_furnace</a><p>Not dismissing this press release, but at least some scale of progress should be used to compare against. Or state where the economical&#x2F;industrial&#x2F;regulatory innovation stands.

Bill Gross, Heliogen’s current CEO previously founded eSolar. eSolar proposed using an array of Heliostaticly controlled mirrors to direct light toward a solar cell: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ESolar" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ESolar</a> So... that part of the eSolar approach is carrying over into Heliogen.<p>Last time this was posted the “AI” component of the play was less clear... But with an array of mirrors, in particular being to generate heat in some volume I guess a more complex feedback&#x2F;control system may be required.

I think the point of calculating using imaging vs a model that requires layout and flat land etc is this would be cheaper to build. You have to build one collection tower&#x2F; target, and the mirrors can aim themselves. This greatly reduces the grading, measurement etc and makes installing on existing land without needing to flatten at all, or to some crazy tolerance, much easier. I can see this used in rolling hills, with less impact etc possible.

Very skeptical that this is a practical means to supply 1500C to an industrial process. Do they plan on piping heat via liquid metal, or what? Do you shutdown on cloudy days and sen everyone home?

I&#x27;d love to see something like this put into use for smelting titanium. We really need to start embracing it as a building material as it doesn&#x27;t corrode or break down like wood, steel, aluminum does...plus it&#x27;s light and strong which would allow moving houses and vehicles made from it much less energy intensive. It would be great to invest the energy into building materials that can last instead of continuously having to fight corrosion.

I wonder who Heliogen hired to do their PR. Must be a really good (or expensive) campaign. There is nothing new in high temperatures and the AI part is pure buzzwords.

Inertia must be incredibly strong. Otherwise, why did it take so long to come up with something that strikingly simple? The last time someone allegedly had an idea like that was around 212 B.C., in the defense of Syracuse.

Another similar project in the mojave desert incinerates 6000 birds a year [1]. I wonder, how they handle that..<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencealert.com&#x2F;this-solar-plant-accidentally-incinerates-up-to-6-000-birds-a-year" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencealert.com&#x2F;this-solar-plant-accidentally-i...</a>