SkyFuel, Inc

 

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September 8, 2014 Issue

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Solar Thermal Power Equipment Design and Manufacture

 

 

About SkyFuel, Inc

www.skyfuel.com

Founded in 2007, SkyFuel, Inc. designs and manufactures innovative parabolic trough concentrating solar collectors. SkyFuel collectors harness solar radiation to produce steam for utility-grade electricity generation and industrial applications. The Company works with EPC partners around the world to supply technology to concentrating solar power (CSP) projects. SkyFuel offers an advanced, glass-free parabolic trough solar thermal collector, called the SkyTrough. It was engineered to minimize the cost of solar heat produced, making it the highest performance and lowest cost solar thermal power system in the world.

 

SkyFuel holds the exclusive worldwide license to manufacture and market the industry’s-leading high reflectance silver- polymer film, called ReflecTechPLUS. ReflecTechPLUSwas jointly developed with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory with the goal of reducing the costs of solar technology. This film is for use as a mirror surface, primarily in single curvature solar technologies such as the SkyTrough. ReflecTechPLUS is the only high reflectance mirror film proven to be durable to outdoor environments for decades, and protected with an abrasion resistant hard coat.

 

The SkyFuel team consists of highly motivated and experienced professionals with backgrounds in solar and conventional power, mechanical and structural engineering, materials science, business, finance, energy markets, and environmental protection.


Kelly Beninga

President

 

Mr. Beninga joined SkyFuel in October, 2010 to lead SkyFuel’s commercial expansion in the concentrating solar power industry. Prior to joiningSkyFuel, he was responsible for developing and directing WorleyParsons’ Global Renewable Energy Group, which provides engineering services for renewable power projects in concentrating solar thermal, biomass, geothermal, and wind technologies.

 

Mr. Beninga’s experience in concentrating solar power, which ranges from thermodynamic analysis and engineering of patented products to business development and management of multimillion dollar projects, is deeply rooted in the industry’s history and began with work on the Department of Energy’s Solar One power tower in the Mojave Desert while working for Martin Marietta in the 1980’s. Mr. Beninga’s career blossomed at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), a Fortune 500 Company, from 1985 to 2003. In SAIC’s Alternative Energy Division, which he ultimately managed, Kelly’s many achievements included parabolic trough solar concentrator design; development and demonstration of a 25 kW dish/Stirling system; expansion of market channels; and leveraging strategic business alliances with major partners and customers.

 

Mr. Beninga also served as Vice President of Solar Technology from 2003 to 2006 at Daystar Technologies, an advanced thin-film photovoltaic company. There he provided product design, manufacturing scale-up, and marketing services through the company’s successful initial public offering (IPO).

 

Mr. Beninga holds an M.A. in Psychology from Naropa University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University.

 

Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – September 8, 2014

 

CEOCFO: Mr. Beninga, what is the concept at SkyFuel?

Mr. Beninga: We design and manufacture solar thermal power equipment, particularly solar collectors called a parabolic trough that collects thermal energy and concentrates solar radiation, and the thermal energy is used in a power plant for generating electricity. The parabolic trough design has been around for decades, but we have had a program with The Department of Energy and National Renewable Energy Laboratory to develop a new generation of parabolic troughs that are less expensive, lighter weight and higher performance. Particularly because they use a different type of reflective surface to reflect the light, it is not a glass mirror, it is a silverized polymer film that is flexible, so it is easy to make into the parabolic shape and it is cheaper than glass. It allows higher performance, so that is the core of the technology difference, but the whole parabolic trough has been redesigned to reduce cost, reduce the weight per parts count and so forth. That is really the charter of the company. The first few years, we started forming in 2007 and we were venture capital backed with some government contracts to develop this technology. Around 2010, we started commercial sales of this product.

 

CEOCFO: What were the challenges in putting together the new technology and putting together the better, cheaper, faster, quicker and easier end product?

Mr. Beninga: There were technical challenges, but they were probably second to the commercialization challenges because utilities, and independent power producers are very conservative. They want to use designs that have been used in the past, so this adoption of the new technology by customers was probably the most difficult hurdle to show that it has the lifetime and performance and so forth as compared to older glass designs.

 

CEOCFO: How were you able to break through?

Mr. Beninga: We did a great amount of testing of the product both internally and with third parties, particularly the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. We did a lot of materials testing and performance testing of the overall system, and those results were published. We had third party engineering companies do evaluations of the technology and write reports, then we put in demonstration systems to show that the system operates as it is advertised. We also wrote technical papers and all those kinds of things to get industry acceptance of the technology. The other thing that we have done for commercial acceptance is we have backing by Munich Re for our warranty, and Munich Re is a large reinsurance company in Germany. We have a warranty on our product and they back our warranty performance and lifetime of the product so that customers feel confident in the product we offer. That has helped a lot too.

 

CEOCFO: What is involved in an installation?

Mr. Beninga: We have these large parabolic troughs that are about six meters wide and 115 meters long, and they have a receiver at the focus that produces the thermal energy. Usually these plants use multiple of these units. We call them solar collector assemblies, or SCAs. You can put anywhere from one to 1,000 in one location. It is very modular depending on how much thermal energy you want, so installation is typically somewhere between 30 and 200 of these units. We manufacture all of the components. We actually manufacture the key components internally and then we outsource many of the standard constructional components. Those components are manufactured or shipped to the project site as components because the system is too large to assemble before you ship it. The whole kit shows up at the project site of structural components, mirrors, drive systems, receivers and so forth, and then we provide supervision in training on site for assembly of the system. Usually the EPC contractor that is billing the overall power plant actually provides the labor for assembly. We just oversee the assembly testing and so forth. Once the system is built, it is hooked up to a thermal power plant that is much like any conventional power plant that uses fossil fuels, and then that power plant generates electricity.

 

CEOCFO: What is the ROI?

Mr. Beninga: It is hard to say because it varies from project to project, but it can be anywhere from 12 to 30 percent depending on the projects.

 

CEOCFO: Do people tend to put in your system when they are looking to replace equipment, or would they be more proactive in looking to be more efficient?

Mr. Beninga: It is a combination of things. We are not really replacing solar equipment, but in some cases we are adding solar to an existing power plant. For instance, we do a great deal of work in hybrid power, which means that you use solar along with another thermal source. We have a project with ENELGreen Power that is being completed right now, where we have added solar to a geothermal power plant where the geothermal resource was being depleted over time. We added solar to it to bring the power back up to full capacity on an existing geothermal power plant. We have a project in Canada with the city of Medicine Hat that is adding solar panels to an existing combined cycle of gas fired power plant so that you can add additional thermal energy to an existing combined cycle power plant. We have projects in develop where we use biomass fuel in conjunction with solar, so the plant runs on biomass at night and solar during the day. The conventional configuration for a CSP, concentrating solar power, is to have thermal collection during the day. Usually there is a storage system where you store the heat and molten salt for cloudy periods or nighttime use, and then you pull that heat back out of the molten salt thermal storage for power generation when you need it. That would be called a standalone solar project, and then there are hybrid systems that you combine with other types of fuels. We do both types of plants. The main advantage of CSP compared to PV is that you can store the energy, which you cannot really do with PV, except for batteries, which are very expensive. The thermal energy storage is much less expensive, so we can generate at night during cloudy periods. We can provide firm, dispatchful power versus the kind of transient power that PV and wind systems produce. That is the main advantage. The other is that you can do hybrid systems, like I discussed previously where you can combine the heat from the solar thermal system with heat from conventional thermal sources to have a dual source power plant.

 

CEOCFO: Are those combined systems relatively easy to put together as far as the layout and the plan? What is involved in configuring, and is that strictly done by Skyfuel or do you work with the utility? How do those projects come about?

Mr. Beninga: There is typically a customer to start, who is either electric utility or independent power producer, and then they have the desire for this facility. We typically would work with an EPC contractor, an engineering procurement construction contractor, that would do the integration of the solar system with existing power plant, and then we would provide the solar collectors themselves. There would be an engineering design phase up front where you look at how much thermal energy the power plant needs, how much land they have available, how they operate the plant, and then figure out the size of the solar field that is required. We have computer simulation programs that simulate the operation of the plant and help us optimize performance of the overall configuration. Once the size of a system has been determined, then you design the specifics of the solar field, foundations and piping and the layout of the collectors and develop design drawings for how they are going to be configured on the site. From that point, you just start manufacturing of the components and construction on site assembling the system. There is a check out phase then when you check out operation of it, commissioning, and then you start operation of the plant.


CEOCFO: What might have changed since you first developed these systems? What have you learned as you have been more out--have there been many changes and tweaks?

Mr. Beninga: We have learned to reduce the cost of the system by some design changes, but also through international procurement from sources like India. We have parts manufactured in India and Mexico and places like that to reduce supply chain costs. We have learned how to assemble to the system faster, reduce labor costs on site and we have learned that integration with some of these other fuel sources is not straightforward, so you have to learn how to operate the system correctly in order to integrate the different fuel sources. That has been a learning curve as well. In terms of our business approach, we do not try to compete with PV because the cost per kilowatt hour for PV is usually cheaper than for concentrating solar power, CSP. We try to focus on applications where PV cannot really compete, which is where there is storage needed for the energy where they need firm, dispatchable power, they want to generate into the evening, or we can combine it with other fuels. We have learned both the business approach that works for us and the technical approach, and there are some procurement commercial approaches that help make the company successful.

 

CEOCFO: If a potential customer did not want to use the PV, are there other alternatives that could be looked at as competition for you?

Mr. Beninga: Our particular type of collector is called a parabolic trough solar thermal collector. There are other types, like a power tower, which BrightSource and Solar Reserve have recently built plants in California where there is a tall tower and then a field of mirrors that focus the light to the top of the tower. That is a competing technology. There is also linear Fresnel that is similar to a parabolic trough, but it is configured a little bit differently. That is a competing technology as well.

 

CEOCFO: Why choose the parabolic trough as opposed to others?

Mr. Beninga: There are two main reasons. One is that it is actually less expensive, and the other is it is much more modular. The power tower really is not feasible under a project size of 50 megawatts, where because of the modularity and the way we go about building our collectors, we can build power plants down to as small as five megawatts or even one megawatt. We have several projects that are smaller scale that these other technologies usually cannot build at that scale, and the cost per kilowatt is less expensive on any scale. It is also a more mature technology. Parabolic troughs have been around for decades. Some of these others are more unproven techniques, and some our working out some of their technical issues.

 

CEOCFO: Are the potential companies that could work with you aware of what you do?

Mr. Beninga: I would not say they are all aware. We have had a good business development and marketing effort where we have gone to many conferences and I have spoken at many conferences. We have trade booths and we put out a ton of press releases and news items, but we also find customers that we did not know about, so I would not say everybody is aware of it.

 

CEOCFO: How do you reach out?

Mr. Beninga: Newsletter, press releases and just watching the news, talking to people and knowing who is planning on developing projects and reaching out to them to see if they will consider using our technology.

 

CEOCFO: If you were to get a large number of projects at the same time, are you able to gear up and handle multiple projects?

Mr. Beninga: We have sized our manufacturing facility to be able to produce 150 megawatts electric of components per year, and that is for the parts that we manufacture ourselves. Our outsource components are virtually limitless because we can use multiple vendors. The main thing for scaling up would be staff for project management and the logistics and procurement, which we can do easily.

 

CEOCFO: What might be different a year or two from now?

Mr. Beninga: We have a new trough that is in test right now that is larger trough. The original trough is called SkyTrough, and the new trough is called SkyTrough DSP, for dispatchable solar power. It is larger; it is eight meters wide and 150 meters long, to get some economy scale from size. Inside the receiver that collects the heat, we can put molten salt directly in the receiver and go to higher temperatures, so this new system can go up to temperatures up to 550 degrees centigrade, whereas the current system that uses heat transfer oil can only go to 400 degrees centigrade. We are going to higher temperatures and larger sizes. The higher temperatures allows for higher power plant efficiency and more efficient storage of the thermal energy. That system is in testing right now, and it will be ready for commercial projects within a year or so.

 

CEOCFO: Put it all together. Why take notice of SkyFuel? What sets the company apart?

Mr. Beninga: It is probably the unique technology. Like I said, we use on-glass mirrors called ReflecTech, and it is ReflecTech mirror film. Really nobody else has it in the industry, so we have a patented design with several patented features of our collectors that people cannot copy. It is higher performance in terms of efficiency, lower cost, faster time for assembly, and it has been recognized widely as the most advanced collector in the industry.



 

“Nobody else has [ReflecTech mirror film] in the industry, so we have a patented design with several patented features of our collectors that people cannot copy. It is higher performance in terms of efficiency, lower cost, faster time for assembly, and it has been recognized widely as the most advanced collector in the industry.” - Kelly Beninga


 

SkyFuel, Inc

18300 W. Hwy 72

Arvada, CO 80007

303.330.0276

www.skyfuel.com

 


 

 



 

 


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