Heliogen, the solar-AI Tech company achieves solar breakthrough.
A
Secretive Investment Company Backed by Bill Gates Used Artificial Intelligence
and Achieved "Solar Energy Breakthough"
As clean energy and solar energy
industries are growing exponentially, a secretive Los-Angeles startup company
named "Heliogen" founded by serial entrepreneur and inventor Bill
Gross, backed up by Bill Gates claimed that it has achieved a solar energy
breakthough that could replace fossil fuels used in heavy carbon emission
industries such as Steel, Gas, Petrochemicals and Cement making.They have
demonstrated a solar high-heat technology oven which can achieve temperatures
from 1000 to 1500 celcius which can be used in industrial processes and it will
replace fossil fuels. All of this is
achieved through a computer vision technology and complex machine learning
algorithms by Artificial Intelligence.
How
they used Artificial Intelligence to achieve this?
The basic idea is placing a large
field of flat-screen sized mirrors and pointing them towards a
single point to heat it up. That idea may look simple. In the
past, other comapnies have used big gearboxes and a lot of
mechanics to direct the each mirror to a single point so that
all of them reflect the sunlight to that point. They have ahieved about
565 degrees celcius oven. But industrial processes, for
instance cement making requires atleast 1000 degree celcius to heat
limestone to break down to lime and carbon dioxide which are
used to make cement. But AI is here.
Sun rays travel 93 million miles
from the Sun to reach the earth.And as they fall on these field of mirrors on
earth, high resolution camera image sensors detect the angle of each reflected beam of thousands of
mirrors and using complex algorithms of AI, each mirror is trained and directed
carefully each second to reflect all those light beams on a single spot.
Imagine large array of mirrors learning themselves using AI to focus on most
optimal spot. The result. They achieved quarter of the surface temperature of
the Sun. The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes.
This is the birth of modern civilization.
Electricity accounts for only 25% of world's energy. The other 75% (use of fossil fuels for transportation and industrial processes) may now be replaced with this solar-tech energy which is currently run by burning fossil fuels. Cement industry releases 2 billion tons of co2 annualy into atmosphere. That is more than twice the emissions released by airline industry. 9 tons of carbon dioxide is released for every 10 tons of cement making. Cement alone accounts for 7% of global CO2 emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. Climate change is the biggest concern right now.
It is an existential issue for your children, for my children and our grandchildren.
This breakthrough is solar-tech will change humanity forever. Heliogen said it is
generating so much heat that its technology could eventually be used to create
clean hydrogen at scale. That carbon-free hydrogen could then be turned into a
fuel for trucks and airplanes.
"Our company along with other imitators could completely replace fossil fuels. This could dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save our planet and our civilization which is currently under threat of extinction. But now, this breakthrough can save our civilization. This is modern human civilization.", Bill Gross said.
Sreekanth Panjala
Science Popularizer | Writer
CEO, Pop-Fut-Sci
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