11 ms·
Heliogen, backed by Gates, says it has achieved a solar breakthrough
- solarengineer 7y agoExcerpt: A secretive startup backed by Bill Gates has achieved a solar breakthrough aimed at saving the planet. Heliogen, a clean energy company that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, said it has discovered a way to use artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius. ===== The article describes a bit about the role the AI is playing, and Heliogen didn't seem to me to have used "AI" as a buzzword
- amboo7 7y agoHow does this compare to, for example, https://www.promes.cnrs.fr/index.php?page=concentrateurs-solaires https://www.promes.cnrs.fr/index.php?page=concentrateurs-sol... (3000°C)? I personally visited one such site in Southern France more than 30 years ago.
- solarengineer 7y agoThis was posted on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21573694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21573694 Animats gave a nice summary [1] of the Vox article [2] that went into some detail. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21580596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21580596 [2] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/11/19/20970252/climate-change-solar-heat-heliogen-csp https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/11/19/20970252/c...
- Waterluvian 7y agoI fundamentally cannot perceive where AI plays a role. Isn't it just a solvable geometry problem?
- splittingTimes 7y ago"Heliogen uses computer vision software, automatic edge detection and other sophisticated technology to train a field of mirrors to reflect solar beams to one single spot." In principle I think you are right, but that would mean for each plant you build you need the exact position of each mirror, the oven chamber and the motion of the sun through the day and year. I think the "AI" approach scales better, as it is rather simple "AI" application.
- gonzo41 7y agowouldn't just giving all of the mirrors survey quality GPS do the same. you'd be able to then just have them work out the angles as it relates to them and the target. It doesn't really seems like and AI problem.
- stinky613 7y agoI think that would depend on how precisely they need to be calibrated, right? IIRC even military GPS is still only accurate to within a few feet.
- gonzo41 7y agoSurvey quality GPS is able to have centimeter accuracy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_kinematic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_kinematic
- mlyle 7y agoBut centimeter accuracy is of limited value. It doesn't tell you how the mirror base inclination has changed due to subsidence and thermal effects. If every mirror has drifted a small angle, and you're trying to point them all at a very small target-- it's hard.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoWhy is AI even needed? It’s not like the sun dances around. Could probably find enough information here [0] what is needed. [0] Practical Astronomy with your Calculator https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521356997/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_-vmeEb373HATZ https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521356997/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_-v...
- function_seven 7y agoThe sun might not, but everything else does. The struts supporting these things change with the temperature, the ground swells or settles, the tower may move a bit, etc. Also, once the AI is written, you can save time on each install by not having to precisely locate each mirror. Get it close enough, and let the magic box fix up the small errors in real time.
- ben509 7y agoFor three reasons cited in The Fine Article: > The problem is that in the past concentrated solar couldn't get temperatures hot enough to make cement and steel. > While other concentrated solar companies attacked this temperature problem by adding steel to make the technology stiffer and sturdier, Heliogen and its team of scientists and engineers turned to artificial intelligence. > Heliogen said it is generating so much heat that its technology could eventually be used to create clean hydrogen at scale.
- jws 7y agoOne of my discarded project ideas was exactly this, but on a smaller scale. A steerable mirror on a mount with a camera for targeting. The idea was to place one on the ground outside a north facing window. The device would then busy itself reflecting the sun up into the room making a nice sunny patch on the ceiling to light the room. They could also be used to deliver extra light to windows with plants in them to grow plants which require more light than is available or to modulate the daily light to fake a different season. Sitting in 2020 the technology is near trivial. The problem is that some knucklehead would point a bunch of them at the same window and set curtains and pigeons on fire. (You’d do this because you had a large room with few windows, so dispersed mirrors would give you multiple dispersed lighting spots in the room… and incinerated pigeons.) I was unable to make the leap to what happens if you are a deliberate and well reasoned knucklehead! In a controlled situation a megawatt of light might be just the thing. Addendum: The mass field of mirrors introduces a lot more work. Some of the immediately interesting problems: • you need a “everyone stop shining at the target” mode for emergency stop, but the mirrors need to move away from the target in such a way that they don’t create convergences elsewhere. Obviously sweeping your portal to hell down the tower would be a bad idea. So you have a collection of autonomous, free thinking mirrors, but when commanded to stop hitting the target they need to not make the same decisions. • your camera probably needs to be able to stare into the heart of a thousand suns (literally). But it also needs to see in ordinary daylight. Maybe a pinhole filter that moves over the lens would be appropriate. • with 999 mirrors shining on the target, you will not be able to see your own contribution to aim. There probably needs to be a “hey! Everyone else look away for a second” command for unit to aim and calibrate itself. See complexities from the first bullet and not incinerating things you like. So yeah, they could have started with my garden heliostats, but then it would be a crack the knuckles, bring in the eggheads, and get to work operation to solve all the hard problems.
- yetihehe 7y agoOk, considering someone had such good idea which is rather obvious in hindsight, but no one had it yet, what would you do to get at least some good money from that, when you don't have enough money to invest in it yourself?
- analognoise 7y agoAgain, we've been able to do this with four photodiodes for something like 30 years. Of course it worked the first time they turned it on - they were using 4 photodiodes. The "AI" and "computer vision" is just to get funding and hype. I'm going to start taking solved problems and applying BS "AI" to them to get funding, sheesh.
- digitalengineer 7y agoSo (to quote Woz): “a lot of Artificial and not a much Intelligence”?
- jws 7y agoA sun angle sensor is great for pointing at the sun. Heliostats need to bisect a ray to the sun and one to the target. Installation requires somehow setting the angle to the target. Then you immediately become aware of how much the ground heaves throughout the day, so you have to make a foundation that goes well down into the earth. Now you have a $200 heliostat on a $1000 foundation with a $100 calibration operation. Using $50 of computer and camera to steer instead of photodiodes and analog controller (presumably in a splayed viewport configuration) lets you lose the $1000 foundation and simplify the calibration. It’s no longer a precision operation, just a pointing out the target.
- analognoise 7y agoNo, with the photodiodes you can still steer the mirrors. The mirror part doesn't change. Nothing about the installation changes, except you throw out the "AI" and "computer vision" hype.
- jws 7y agoHow do you know where the target is? That's the part where a computer helps. You don't need to see to know where the sun is given a frame of reference, that's just math and a clock. Your frame of reference is initially unknown and varies slightly, but significantly, with time. Training a computer vision system to look for "insanely bright rectangle subtending <1° of space elevated on a stick" is just the thing computer vision is becoming good at. It's even easier than asking my phone to "show me my pictures of goats" (111 hits, zero false positives (assuming sheep are goats)). Of course, a tall skinny field tech should think twice about wearing a short, bulky, white jacket.
- bullen 7y agoCement requires 1450 degrees Celsius, this solar raid manages 1000+!? how are you going to boil heavy lime and clay up on that 10 meter high tower? Everything Bill Gates has ever done (or financed) has been stolen, a fraud or both. Edit: Whoa, heavy bias towards Mr Gates, a surprise dear HN community. I'm using my karma to learn! ;)
- zamadatix 7y agohttps://www.globalcement.com/news/item/10167-heliogen-looks-to-heat-cement-pre-calciners-straight-from-solar https://www.globalcement.com/news/item/10167-heliogen-looks-... In this case he is just the investor.
- function_seven 7y agoPre-warming your materials to 1,000˚C will save a lot of fuel, no? Now the gas furnace just needs to add a few hundred more degrees to the inputs.
- bullen 7y agoHow much energy needs to be used to build the system that pre-warms the materials? The tree is the best solar panel, and nature invented it.
- jws 7y agoA reply into oblivion… but generally you would circulate molten sodium through the system to transfer heat to ground level where you do work and have storage tanks for hot sodium when the sun isn’t shining.
- bullen 7y agoHow much energy is required to build mentioned sodium system, how long does the sodium system last? The tree is the best solar panel, and nature invented it.
- lkbm 7y agoBeing downvoted for an unsubstantiated blanket claim like that doesn't even begin to suggest a bias. The only way such a comment wouldn't be downvoted would be if there were a widespread bias against the person in question. Pick a random person. If you posted this exact statement about them, would you expect to be downvoted? Personally, I'd downvote it regardless of who it was.
- oschrenk 7y agoI think the article is overplaying the promise of CO reductions. Around 60% of CO2 (see 1) emissions during cement manufacturing are just a byproduct of the chemical process converting calcium carbonate to lime (see 2) - nothing that solar power can help with. 1) https://precast.org/2013/05/concrete-and-co2/ https://precast.org/2013/05/concrete-and-co2/ 2) https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/gp/bgp/3_1_Cement_Production.pdf https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/gp/bgp/3_1_Cement_P...
- sanxiyn 7y agoCement is 8% of global CO2 emission. 40% of that is still greater than air travel (about 2.5%).
- stkdump 7y agoI thought that the problem with air travel is not (just) the amount of CO2 emitted, but also the altitude, which makes the green house effect bigger per ton of CO2.
- Confiks 7y agoIt's not about CO2 emissions, but rather the high-altitude NOx that contributes more to climate change than low-altitude emissions. However, it's debatable whether the amount is very significant, at least compared to other sources of NOx. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation#Carbon_dioxide_(CO2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviati...
- the8472 7y agoThe byproduct of the chemical process is largely reabsorbed as the cement cures. The part that's from the fuel burned to heat it is not, and that's the part that matters in the long-term balance.
- ben509 7y agoAnother interesting problem this might solve is birds. Yes, domestic cats kill orders of magnitudes more birds, but that argument a. depends on relative scale that people don't grok, and b. coming from an energy company reinforces the preconception that they're callous. Add radar and a sufficiently smart AI, and they could turn a PR problem into a marketing pitch by showing birds flying through unscathed while the mirrors shift to avoid them.
- sanxiyn 7y agoThis is frankly a stupid problem caused by people who can't multiply, but I guess a stupid problem deserves a stupid solution.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoOr, direct all mirrors at them and fry them to cinders. Hard to count cinders.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoIf you can track individual birds like that I'd have thought you could do targeted scaring to deter the birds before they get fried. Moving mirrors quickly enough seems like it would require quite significant adaptation of the apparatus?
- cjsawyer 7y agoI also assume that the mechanical setup wouldn’t be sufficient as it was designed to move on the scale of a whole day, not tracking flying objects
- jerry292 7y ago@elonmusk please work with integrating battery tech with these guys!!
- edhelas 7y agoBacking up solar production with batteries is pointless. Except for a really specific cases. The costs are too high, the stress on the grid is too high, the grid need to be overscaled, the batteries need to be changed each 15 years the solar panels need to be changed each 20 years. And even if we overcome this, we will need so much solar panel and batteries that we simply don't have enough raw materials to do so (to replace a 1GW nuclear core you need to cover half of Paris with solar panels, source http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/rap-enq/r2195-t1.asp http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/15/rap-enq/r2195-t1.asp). In France, 95% of the stored electricity is done using reversible-damns (you pump water up to store, you empty the water and generate electricity when you need it), only 2% using batteries. We basically put damns everywhere we could on the territory. We have 2 days max of storage. How can we now store weeks/months of solar-panel/wind electricity we don't need to use it when we need it? Batteries are inefficient for grid storage, oversized, heavy and too short term. That's it. We now know for decades that damns are the easiest way to do it and we can't do more than a few days of storage. At one moment we simply have to face the maths and physics. Trusting the "next big thing" in battery storage/solar production, even if we do 5x more energy, even if we develop long lasting ones, will not work in the end. Our needs are too big and the amount of minerals and other raw materials we need is way too big. That's it.
- jerry292 7y agoYeah true. I heard of another Bill Gates backed startup that actually stored the energy in a form of potential energy which was way more cost effective. Keep in mind though dams are super catastrophic to the environment as far as water flow which can be detrimental to moisture and animals that depend on water in certain areas
- beatgammit 7y agoI'm sure you could do it with a closed system, e.g. pump water up a cliff, and when you need power, bring it back down. I'm guessing using dams on existing rivers is just more convenient than building a closed system from scratch since it can double dip on hydro infrastructure.
- Jamwinner 7y agoAm I missing the breakthrough? This just reads like boilerplate tech marketing, replete with questionable ai usage. I suspect without its well known backer anyone would notice.
- jccooper 7y agoThey seem to be using computer vision techniques to dynamically aim the mirrors. Presumably static or open-loop techniques don't focus as precisely, and using a closed loop also allows them to reduce the stiffness (and this material use) in their mounts and/or fewer mirrors.
- sanxiyn 7y agoClosed loop enables higher temperature. I doubt material saving is worth it.
- mlyle 7y agoPointing hundreds of mirrors is expensive. Requiring a lot less rigidity for the motion system is notable. I don't doubt you could have done this open loop with a very rigid (expensive) platform before (including solving problems of ground subsidence). But now you can do it with a reasonably priced platform closed loop, which is what makes it actually possible.
- core-questions 7y agoCould you expand on what closed/open loop mean in this context?
- lifelongUU 7y agoOpen loop means that they’re just using a mathematical prediction of where to point the mirror at a specific time, given the relative position between the heliostat, the target and the sun. adjustments to the mirrors are typically done every 10 to 15 seconds, which is sub optimal. Closed loop means that they’re actually using Computer vision to dynamically sense the specific angles between the sun and the target and then adjust the mirrors accordingly, no mathematical model required, and the adjustments can be done tens of times per second.
- meggar 7y agoCool, an Archimedes Death Ray with AI.
- janpot 7y agoI'm wondering, where does AI come into play? Isn't this achievable with just basic geometry.
- sanxiyn 7y agoI wouldn't call closed control loop "AI", but you need some control to deal with unpredictable ground heave/subsidence.
- seshagiric 7y agoIs the company backed by Bill Gross or Bill Gates or both?
- Stierlitz 7y agoJust how much AI is required to keep a mirror aligned with a target. If I see another article on AI, cloud or blockchain then I'll eat my keyboard :]
- mads 7y agoJust barely enough so it can make it into the marketing material without seeming like a total scam.