The new system provides 24/7 solar power

A new system designed by scientists at the Masachusette Institute of Technology (MIT) can provide stable power for 24 hours a day in all weather conditions.

Professor Alexander Slocum and his colleagues at MIT have created a system that combines heating and storing heat in a heat sink on the ground instead of on a tower.

This container will collect light concentrating through a small opening above and into the horizontal metal plate to burn down the salt layer.

When salt is heated during sunny days, the heat will gradually move downward, heating up the next salt layer. Water circulating around the salt-heated storage tank evaporates water and rotates the power supply turbine whenever needed.

The new system is called CSPonD (solar focused on demand) and will outlive the current solar system.

The CSPonD is reported in detail in an article by Solar Energy magazine, which will use a series of mirrors along the hillside to focus the light on salt heating in the reservoir. The system could be "cheap and less expensive , " Alexander Slocum said.

The team applied the CSPonD trial on the hillsides near White Sands and Lake China in California. By focusing the light on two large tanks containing potassium nitrate, each tank can provide 20 megawatts of electricity to 20,000 households for 24 hours.

The system can store enough heat, accumulating more than 10 days of sunshine, to generate electricity on cloudy days.

The cost of solar power is about 7-33 cents / 1kW. This is a low price and can compete with conventional power supplies.