Fun With Balloons - Correction

Correction. My last blog post was quite excited about Cool Earth's new inflatable solar concentration technology, which lowered the cost per Watt for solar to $0.20, and I found the idea too good to be true. Well, I did some further research and found a CNET article with the following quote:

"Cummings [Cool Earth's founder and CTO] envisions that these balloons will be cabled together above farmland and would be replaced every year"

Darn. I was hoping the balloons could stick around for at least a few years. If they have to be replaced every year, the cost per kWh becomes a bit higher. But what's interesting is that it's still cheaper than oil, getting close to natural gas, while still quite a bit more pricey than coal. But if they could make those balloons last four years, the price per kWh is about what coal costs!

Here are my rough calculations (I'm not a commodities trader, so I apologize if the prices aren't up to the minute):



I, for one, am rooting for them to make those balloons a little more durable.

Fun With Balloons!

As I say in my introduction above, I'm interested in solutions that will be real, achievable, and market-driven. So with that last part in mind, let's see if we can have some fun with balloons and make some money in the process.

Cool Earth claims to have technology, called Inflatable Solar Concentration, that will reduce the price for solar energy to roughly $0.20 per Watt within three years (for comparison purposes, check out my posts below for the solar stations that are producing it at $2 to $3.20 per Watt). Wow.

So let's say you had a really big back yard and you wanted to buy some balloons and create your own power plant. Could you make money? Let's run the numbers:



So we raised $200k, bought 2,000 balloons, strung them together, and we're cranking out a Megawatt. Assuming they capture energy 9 hours a day, we're selling 3.3 M kWh back to the grid. At 7 cents per kWh, we make our money back plus a profit in year one. And each successive year is pure profit.

Is it just me or does this sound too good to be true? I'm going to give these guys a call and see if I can buy some balloons.