Bill Gross was just 15 when he built his first solar dish, a parabolic mirror four feet across. "I boiled water with it. I cooked hot dogs. I don't know what I was thinking." Now he is 44, the president of Idealab in Pasadena, California, and he knows exactly what he is thinking: Solar dishes could be the best way on Earth to produce energy. The reason solar power hasn't delivered on its promises so far, Gross says, is because engineers have been too focused on making electricity from the light of the sun, in photovoltaic cells. He thinks the real answer is to make electricity not from the sun's light but from its reflected heat.
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