A solar greenhouse arises among the sand dunes

On a small plot of land amid the barren sand dunes of the Arab state of Oman, you’ll find rows of glass houses containing six-meter high curved mirrors. Some day before the end of this month, the mirrors will start focusing the area’s abundant sunlight and begin putting it to work generating steam that will go to a nearby oil field and boost its production.

The 7 MW pilot project is built by Fremont, Calif-based GlassPoint Solar, and will be crucial for the four-year-old GlassPoint to validate its concentrating solar thermal technology, says Rod MacGregor, CEO of GlassPoint Solar.

The project is only the second for GlassPoint, which built a 300 KW system for Berry Petroleum in central California in early 2011. But the Middle East is where GlassPoint wants to be. It’s the mother lode of oil production and where natural gas, which has historically been used to produce steam for oil extraction, remains expensive. Natural gas in the U.S., on the other hand, is too cheap right now to make solar steam production an attractive option, MacGregor said.

GlassPoint’s solar steam equipment uses steel mirrors to concentrate the sunlight onto water-containing steel pipes to produce steam. The set up is similar to the equipment used by much bigger rivals such as Abengoa Solar and Areva. What sets GlassPoint’s design apart is the glass structure that seals each row of mirrors and pipes and protects the equipment from strong wind, sand, dust and humidity. Those same conditions present challenges to any kind of solar steam or electricity generation equipment and require more frequent cleaning.

MacGregor compares his company’s equipment design to that of a greenhouse. Growers “try to get as much light into a greenhouse while protecting the plants from the environment. That’s similar to what we do,” he said.

Source: money.cnn.com