Energy
Sidebands
Spain powers ahead with solar-thermal
Spain is rapidly becoming a world leader
in solar-thermal power generation with
the inauguration last month of a new
11 MW plant in Sanlúcar. It follows hot
on the heels of the opening in July of two
50 MW similar plants in Guadix and
Badajoz. Costing 7300m, the Guadix
plant occupies an area of 2 km2 and will
produce enough electricity for an
estimated 15 000 homes; while the
7236m Badajoz plant has an area of
Acconia Energía
1. 3 km2 and will produce enough
electricity for 28 000 homes.
According to Carlos Muñoz, head of the
thermoelectric section of the APPA, the
Spanish association of producers of
renewable energies, Spain has a further
10 solar thermal plants in construction.
When complete, they would meet – and
probably exceed – the Spanish
government’s objective to reach 500 MW
from solar-thermal plants by 2010.
However, the country still lags behind the
US, which currently generates 350 MW
from such facilities.
The heat is on
The 50 MW solar-thermal plant at
Badajoz in Spain will
produce electricity for
28 000 homes.
Solar-thermal plants work by focusing
light through parabolic-shaped mirrors
onto oil, molten salts or water. The heated
liquid is then used to produce steam that
drives turbines. Another mode of
operation, as used at the new plant in
Sanlúcar, involves a tower design. Here,
the liquid is placed in a container above a
tower and mirrors on the ground focus the
light onto it.
Solar-thermal is especially attractive
because heat can be stored before
converting it into electricity, thus allowing
the plant to produce energy when there is
no sunlight for up to seven hours. About
35 projects for new thermo-solar plants
were presented to the Spanish Ministry
of Industry between June and July.
“If they are all approved, we expect
2200–2500 MW installed in Spain by
2011,” says Muñoz. This, he says, would
be about 5% of the country’s annual
energy consumption.
Michele Catanzaro
Barcelona
Physicist advises UK on energy
The Cambridge University physicist
David MacKay has been appointed chief
scientific adviser to the UK government’s
Department of Energy and Climate
Change. MacKay, 42, who works on
machine learning and information theory,
is author of the book Sustainable Energy –
Without the Hot Air, which offers no-nonsense numerical estimates of the UK’s
future energy production and consumption
after fossil-fuels run out. Last month
MacKay described climate change and
secure energy as “two of the most urgent
issues facing the UK and the global
community” and added that “the solutions
must be rooted firmly in science”. A review
of his book appears on pp46—47.
High-risk energy plans yield low rewards
Scientists have complained that a new
research body run by the US Department of Energy (DOE) is suffering
from management problems and is
rejecting funding proposals without
stating why. The DOE’s Advanced
Research Projects Agency–Energy
(ARPA-E) – created in 2007 – is designed to fund high-risk, high-payoff
research and development projects in
energy. However, the agency, which
received its first budget in April, has
so far turned down almost 95% of
proposals after the first round.
ARPA-E is meant to fund new projects that could help to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and the
US’s dependence on foreign sources
of energy. Since April, the agency has
received 3500 eight-page “concept
proposals” asking for a share of the
$150m in research cash. However, all
but 200 of the applicants received a
letter stating that their proposals were
“unlikely to be funded”.
One scientist to have complained
that the letters did not state the rea-
I had no idea
what the
referees had
said or
the expertise
of those
involved in the
refereeing
sons for rejection is Martin Hoffert
from New York University. “I had no
idea what the referees had said or
the expertise of those involved in the
refereeing,” says Hoffert, whose team
had proposed research on the feasibility of space-based solar-power technology using diode lasers rather than
microwaves as the transmission medium. Even though NASA had previously endorsed the concept, Hoffert
says he was treated like other researchers who had “off-the-wall ideas”.
The problem stems in part from
ARPA-E not having a director – although Arun Majumdar from the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is expected to be appointed soon
– and too few programme managers.
But the agency says that applicants
can submit full proposals even if they
receive a “rejection” letter. “It is just a
different way of operating from what
scientists are used to,” a DOE spokes-person told Physics World.
Peter Gwynne
Boston, MA
Aage Niels Bohr: 1922–2009
The Danish physicist and Nobel laureate
Aage Niels Bohr died on 8 September at
the age of 87. The fourth son of quantum-
physics pioneer Niels Bohr, he shared the
1975 Nobel Prize for Physics with
Ben Mottelson and Leo Rainwater for their
work on the structure of the nucleus. The
trio combined the liquid-drop model of the
atomic nucleus, which pictures it as an
incompressible fluid, with the “shell”
model to produce a “collective model” of
the nucleus. Bohr studied physics at the
University of Copenhagen in 1940 before
he and his family were forced to flee
Denmark because of their Jewish
background after the Nazis invaded the
country. Bohr later worked on the
Manhattan Project at Los Alamos with his
father, whom he also succeeded in 1963
as head of the Institute for Theoretical
Physics in Copenhagen.
Alan Turing receives official apology
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has
issued a posthumous apology to the
mathematician Alan Turing over the
“appalling” way he was treated by the
British government for being gay. In a letter
to the Daily Telegraph, Brown said that he
was “very proud to say: we’re sorry. You
deserved so much better.” The apology
came after thousands signed an online
petition created by computer scientist
John Graham Cumming. In addition to
helping crack the codes of the German
Enigma machine during the Second World
War, Turing pioneered modern computing
and was a key thinker in artificial
intelligence. In 1952 he was convicted of
“gross indecency” for being gay. Faced
with the choice of incarceration or
“chemical castration”, Turing opted for the
latter, but committed suicide two years
later aged just 41.
