Brenmiller Energy to Demonstrate a Revolutionary New Solar Energy Source

24 May, 2013

The company believes its technology can reduce the prices of solar energy to half of its current cost. "We bring a modular concept to the alternative energy industry, which is now based on big and expensive complete integrated systems"

The company believes its technology can reduce the prices of solar energy to half of its current cost. “We bring a modular concept to the alternative energy industry”

Avi Brenmiller. The future belongs to distributed energy sources
Avi Brenmiller. The future belongs to distributed energy networks

The newly established Brenmiller Energy from Tel-Aviv, Israel, plans to bring a revolutionary technology to the growing market of alternative energy production. Its technology was silently developed over the past year and is ready to launch a new “Energy Engine” that can transform current power grids into smaller, cheaper and more effective distributed power networks.

Brenmiller Energy was established by Avi Brenmiller in April 2012. Before establishing the company, Avi Brenmiller served as the CEO of Solel. In 2009 Solel was acquired by Siemens for $418 million, and Brenmiller was appointed CEO of Siemens Solar Thermal Energy. But in 2011 Siemens have decided to back out of the solar industry, leading to Brenmiller’s resignation.

Today the new start-up employs about 20 engineers directly plus 40 engineers indirectly, through outsourcing agreements. His new Technology, he told Techtime, copes with the two major problems of the alternative energy industry: stable and reliable power supply, and electricity prices.

“We have developed a universal energy cell based on heat generation by arrays of mirrors. The basic idea itself is not new. Our core technology lies in a new storage body that works like a capacitor. It accumulates the heat very effectively and creates hot steam in a very stable and regulated manner, regardless the sun condition”.

Basic building block diagram of an Energy Cell
Basic building block diagram of an Energy Cell

 

The energy cell interfaces with standard turbines and easily installed in existing or new power plants. The company believes its technology can reduce the prices of solar energy to half of its current cost. The company is ready to prove its claim.In the coming weeks it will begin the construction works on a demonstration plant in the Negev, in order to provide electricity for the first client in October 2013.

“We bring a modular concept to the alternative energy industry, which is now based on big and expensive complete integrated systems,” said Avi Brenmiller. “Our energy cell is like a plug and play device. As a complete system, it produce 1-5 Megawatts of electricity. You can install a unit everywhere, and when you need more electricity you can add another unit.

“The enrgy cell is even simpler. You just plug the cell to every standard steam turbine, and start to produce power and the energy cell responsible for a constant supply of steam to your turbine.”

Brenmiller believes that his technology is well suited to deal with the profound challenges that shadow the future of power grid in the world. “Today’s power grids are too expensive. Nobody can pay price needed to transport energy over cables for hundreds of miles. That is why the era of mega power stations is over. We need to adopt a distributed approach: to shrink the power plants size and reduce the distant to the users. It is now widely agreed in the industry that we will move to decentralized electricity production,” he said.

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Posted in: Energy & Environment , Featured Stories , News , Technology

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