GlassPoint is a private company founded in 2009 that designs and manufactures solar steam generators which use solar thermal technology to generate steam for industrial processes.
 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Solar thermal energy |
Number of employees | 100-250 |
| Website | glasspoint |
GlassPoint's enclosed trough technology encloses lightweight, trough-shaped mirrors with piping in a standard agricultural greenhouse, concentrating the sun's energy to create steam. [1] By using the enclosed trough architecture, GlassPoint claims it can produce emission-free steam for two to three times less than competing concentrated solar power technologies, such as the power tower and linear fresnel. [2] The company is based in New York, New York, with a global presence.
In December 2012, GlassPoint announced $26 million in Series B financing. Investors in the round included Royal Dutch Shell, RockPort Capital, Nth Power and Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital. [3]
In September 2014, GlassPoint announced $53 million in Series C financing. Investors in the round included Royal Dutch Shell, State General Reserve Fund of Oman, RockPort Capital, Nth Power and Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital. [4]
It was announced that GlassPoint was to be liquidated in May 2020, the company citing low and unpredictable oil and gas prices for the decision. [5] [6]
In June 2022, GlassPoint re-emerged under the leadership of the founding CEO, Rod MacGregor, adopting a new build-own-operate business model and unveiling an MOU for one of the largest solar projects in history with Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma’aden Group). GlassPoint announced it has moved to a “steam as a service” model to reduce up front risk and expanded its markets to include hard-to-abate industries producing materials essential to the energy transition, including mining, metals, and manufacturing.
In 2011, GlassPoint deployed the world's first commercial solar EOR project at an oilfield operated by Berry Petroleum in Kern County, California USA. [7] Built in less than six weeks, the system uses the sun's radiant heat to produce approximately 1 million British Thermal Units (Btus) per hour of solar heat. GlassPoint partnered with local firms TJ Cross Engineers and PCL Industrial Services, as well as San Francisco based REM Design, to construct the system, which spans 7,000 square feet of land on the 100-year-old oilfield. The enclosed trough system preheats water to 190 °F used as feed water for Berry Petroleum's gas-fired steam generators.
In May 2013, GlassPoint commissioned the Middle East's first solar EOR project, a 7MW system developed in partnership with Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), the largest oil company in the Sultanate of Oman. The system produces an average of 50 tons of emissions-free steam daily. [8] It has operated successfully for more than 4 years, generating an average of 50 tons of emissions-free steam per day that is fed directly into existing thermal EOR operations at PDO's Amal West oilfield. [9]
The system was completed on time, on budget, and with no lost time or injuries demonstrating GlassPoint and PDO's shared commitment to health, safety, security and the environment (HSSE). During the first 12 months of operations, the actual performance of the GlassPoint system matched output models by a few percent and steam production continues to exceed contracted performance targets. The system recorded 98.6% uptime and maintained regular operations even during severe dust and sand storms. The automated roof-washing unit proved particularly effective in all weather events, restoring system performance overnight. [10] The project served as a performance and operational baseline for larger steam generators in Oman and provided Petroleum Development Oman with valuable information for planning potential large-scale projects in the future.
In July 2015, Petroleum Development Oman and GlassPoint announced that they had signed an agreement to build a 1 GWth solar field of 1.8 km. The project, named Miraah, was designed to be the world's largest solar field measured by peak thermal capacity. [11]
In August 2017, GlassPoint and its contractors crossed the threshold of 1.5 million man-hours worked without lost time injury (LTI) at Miraah.
In November 2017, GlassPoint and Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) completed construction on the first block of the Miraah solar plant safely on schedule and in line with budget and successfully delivered steam to the Amal West oilfield. [12]
Today, the first 330 MWt at Miraah are operating and meeting all performance targets. [13]
In November 2017, Aera Energy and GlassPoint announced a joint project to create California's largest solar energy field. In November 2018, GlassPoint and Occidental Petroleum of Oman signed an agreement to cooperate on a solar thermal project to facilitate oil production on an oilfield in the Sultanate of Oman. Neither deal was completed due to financing issues.
In June 2022, Glasspoint and Saudi Arabian Mining Company (Ma’aden Group) signed a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") to develop the world's largest solar process steam plant in Ras al Khair, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
When complete, the 1,500 MWth facility will reduce Ma’aden’s carbon emissions by over 600,000 tons annually, nearly 4% of Ma'aden's overall carbon footprint, bringing the company closer to its mandate of carbon neutrality by 2050.
Solar thermal energy (STE) is a form of energy and a technology for harnessing solar energy to generate thermal energy for use in industry, and in the residential and commercial sectors.
A parabolic trough is a type of solar thermal collector that is straight in one dimension and curved as a parabola in the other two, lined with a polished metal mirror. The sunlight which enters the mirror parallel to its plane of symmetry is focused along the focal line, where objects are positioned that are intended to be heated. In a solar cooker, for example, food is placed at the focal line of a trough, which is cooked when the trough is aimed so the Sun is in its plane of symmetry.
Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) is the leading exploration and production company in the Sultanate of Oman. The Company delivers the majority of the country's crude oil production and natural gas supply. The company is owned by the Government of Oman, Royal Dutch Shell (34%), TotalEnergies (4%) and Partex (2%). The first economic oil find was made in 1962, and the first oil consignment was exported in 1967.
Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) is a concentrated solar power plant in California, United States. With the combined capacity from three separate locations at 354 megawatt (MW), it was once the world's second largest solar thermal energy generating facility, until the commissioning of the even larger Ivanpah facility in 2014. It consisted of nine solar power plants in California's Mojave Desert, where insolation is among the best available in the United States.
Nevada Solar One is a concentrated solar power plant, with a nominal capacity of 64 MW and maximum steam turbine power output up to 72 MW net (75 MW gross), spread over an area of 400 acres (160 ha). The projected CO2 emissions avoided is equivalent to taking approximately 20,000 cars off the road. The project required an investment of $266 million USD, and the project officially went into operation in June 2007. Electricity production is estimated to be 134 GWh (gigawatt hours) per year.
Enhanced oil recovery, also called tertiary recovery, is the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted otherwise. Although the primary and secondary recovery techniques rely on the pressure differential between the surface and the underground well, enhanced oil recovery functions by altering the chemical composition of the oil itself in order to make it easier to extract. EOR can extract 30% to 60% or more of a reservoir's oil, compared to 20% to 40% using primary and secondary recovery. According to the US Department of Energy, carbon dioxide and water are injected along with one of three EOR techniques: thermal injection, gas injection, and chemical injection. More advanced, speculative EOR techniques are sometimes called quaternary recovery.
There are several solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which supply power to the electricity grid. Insolation in the Mojave Desert is among the best available in the United States, and some significant population centers are located in the area. These plants can generally be built in a few years because solar plants are built almost entirely with modular, readily available materials. Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) is the name given to nine solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which were built in the 1980s, the first commercial solar plant. These plants have a combined capacity of 354 megawatts (MW) which made them the largest solar power installation in the world, until Ivanpah Solar Power Facility was finished in 2014.
Steam injection is an increasingly common method of extracting heavy crude oil. Used commercially since the 1960s, it is considered an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method and is the main type of thermal stimulation of oil reservoirs. There are several different forms of the technology, with the two main ones being Cyclic Steam Stimulation and Steam Flooding. Both are most commonly applied to oil reservoirs, which are relatively shallow and which contain crude oils which are very viscous at the temperature of the native underground formation. Steam injection is widely used in the San Joaquin Valley of California (US), the Lake Maracaibo area of Venezuela, and the oil sands of northern Alberta, Canada.
The South Belridge Oil Field is a large oil field in northwestern Kern County, San Joaquin Valley, California, about forty miles west of Bakersfield. Discovered in 1911, and having a cumulative production of over 1,500 million barrels (240,000,000 m3) of oil at the end of 2008, it is the fourth-largest oil field in California, after the Midway-Sunset Oil Field, Kern River Oil Field, and Wilmington Oil Field, and is the sixth-most productive field in the United States. Its estimated remaining reserves, as of the end of 2008, were around 494 million barrels (78,500,000 m3), the second-largest in the state, and it had 6,253 active wells. The principal operator on the field was Aera Energy LLC, a joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil. Additionally, the field included the only onshore wells in California owned and operated by ExxonMobil.
Sopogy was a solar thermal technology supplier founded in 2002 at the Honolulu, Hawaii-based clean technology incubator known as Energy Laboratories. The company began its research on concentrating solar thermal energy to produce solar steam and thermal heat for absorption chillers or industrial process heat. The company has also developed applications that incorporate its solar collectors to generate electricity and desalination. Sopogy's name origin comes from industry key words "So" from solar "po" from power and "gy" from energy and technology. The company has its OEM and IPP sales teams along with research and development located in Honolulu, and in 2006 expanded its manufacturing, C&I and oil and gas sales teams in its Silicon Valley facility. Pacific Business News and Greentech Media reported that the VC-funded micro-concentrator solar power firm was shutting down operations based on statements from its President David Fernandez, however Hitachi Power Systems acquired Sopogy in a private transaction in 2014.
Concentrated solar power systems generate solar power by using mirrors or lenses to concentrate a large area of sunlight into a receiver. Electricity is generated when the concentrated light is converted to heat, which drives a heat engine connected to an electrical power generator or powers a thermochemical reaction.
Heavy oil production is a developing technology for extracting heavy oil in industrial quantities. Estimated reserves of heavy oil are over 6 trillion barrels, three times that of conventional oil and gas.
A compact linear Fresnel reflector (CLFR) – also referred to as a concentrating linear Fresnel reflector – is a specific type of linear Fresnel reflector (LFR) technology. They are named for their similarity to a Fresnel lens, in which many small, thin lens fragments are combined to simulate a much thicker simple lens. These mirrors are capable of concentrating the sun's energy to approximately 30 times its normal intensity.
Solar Euromed is a high technology group based in France specialized in concentrated solar power technology, in activity from 2007 to 2016.
Frank Shuman was an American inventor, engineer and solar energy pioneer known for his work on solar engines, especially those that used solar energy to heat water that would produce steam.
Solar thermal enhanced oil recovery is a form of thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a technique applied by oil producers to extract more oil from maturing oil fields. Solar EOR uses solar thermal arrays to concentrate the sun's energy to heat water and generate steam. The steam is injected into an oil reservoir to reduce the viscosity, or thin, heavy crude thus facilitating its flow to the surface. Thermal recovery processes, also known as steam injection, have traditionally burned natural gas to produce steam. Solar EOR is proving to be a viable alternative to gas-fired steam production for the oil industry. Solar EOR can generate the same quality steam as natural gas, reaching temperatures up to 750 °F (399 °C) and 2,500 PSI.
Energy use in Oman was 381 TWh in 2020, almost double the consumption in 2010.
Termosolar Borges is a hybrid biomass-parabolic trough solar thermal power plant which provides electricity to Spain's transmission system. It is located about 100 kilometres (62 mi) west of Barcelona, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) south-east of Lleida, near Les Borges Blanques, Catalonia, Spain.
Miraah is a solar thermal energy plant that is under construction in Oman for the production of steam for solar thermal enhanced oil recovery. In July 2015, Petroleum Development Oman and GlassPoint Solar announced that they signed a $600 million agreement to build the 1 GWth solar field. The project will be one of the world's largest solar field measured by peak thermal capacity.
Belridge Solar is an enhanced oil recovery facility that is currently being developed in the South Belridge Oil Field and, when complete, will be California’s largest solar energy field. It is a joint project between Aera Energy and GlassPoint Solar. It will be the first in the world to incorporate solar steam generation with solar electricity generation. These technologies will be leveraged to reduce costs for the traditional oil and gas company while at the same time reducing emitted carbon and increasing local air quality.