Cool Earth's Breaththrough Inflatable Solar Concentrators

Wow, this technology sounds pretty amazing. I just hope it's real.

The closely-held firm has developed a technology that uses a string of balloons
to concentrate and capture the sun's energy without occupying valuable real
estate or using large amounts of silicon.

"In short we are developing free-market-hyper-competitive renewable energy with the mission of reaching global carbon neutrality," Cool Earth Solar founder Dr. Eric B. Cummings told mongabay.com via email. "We are working to reduce the cost of solar electricity by a factor of 25, making it cheaper to produce than energy from coal or other non-renewable sources. By developing a solution from minimal, low-cost materials, we aim to make solar generation as profitable as today's best investment options."

"Inflatable concentrators gather light and focus it onto photovoltaic cells, increasing the energy impacting the cells many times over," the Cool Earth website explains. "Series of concentrators are suspended on
support and control cables stretched between poles. By suspending the concentrators, vast areas of land can be easily converted for solar-energy production with limited environmental impact. The ground beneath the concentrators remains free for other uses, such as farming or ranching."

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Mark over at Energy Crunch discusses some of the financial possibilities offered by this technology.