The World’s Largest Solar Thermal Power Plant

[n2doc]

The Ivanpah solar thermal plant uses concentric circles of mirrors that will focus sunlight onto a central tower, generating high temperatures to produce steam. The plant will feature three towers, each with its own set of mirrors. The first unit, in the foreground, is the nearest to completion. By February of this year, workers had begun to install mirrors, which can be seen in the upper left and right sides of the field.

The outlines of a massive solar thermal power plant—the largest ever—are starting to appear in the wilderness outside of Las Vegas. The $2.2 billion project, which is being built by Oakland, California-based Brightsource, stretches over 3,600 acres near Ivanpah, California. When it’s finished, it will generate 370 megawatts of electricity on sunny days.

The project has been a long time coming. Brightsource first filed an application for the project in the summer of 2007. Approval took three years. Construction was temporarily slowed to accommodate the care and relocation of desert tortoises—a threatened species—found in larger numbers than expected. The project, which will generate electricity by using mirrors to concentrate sunlight to heat up water and drive steam turbines, is now expected to be finished next year.

Even as the project nears completion, the future of solar thermal power plants is in doubt. That’s in large part because prices for solar panels—which convert sunlight to electricity directly—have dropped quickly in the last few years, causing at least one company to abandon plans to build solar thermal plants in favor of making ones that use solar panels.

Yet solar thermal has at least one great strength compared to many other types of solar power: the heat it produces is easy to store, so electricity can be generated even after the sun goes down, and power can be dispatched to the grid whenever it’s most needed.

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/40460/?p1=A1

[ellenfl]

1. i thought for sure this was in russia. good for california! eom

[hunter]

2. This solar plant and the nearby golf course indicate...

...there is no intelligent life here.

same as this:



or this:



or this:

[AtheistCrusader]

4. What's wrong with the solar plant?

[hunter]

5. It's ugly and it's trashing the desert. Plants and animals lived there.

This power plant killed them.

There's no reason for it.

We could build these things on land that's already been trashed.

[AtheistCrusader]

6. It is an ideal site

but, I see your point on the environmental impact, and there's also the lost transmission waste having it so far from a city. Probably make up the difference if you just put it on the outskirts of San Diego anyway.

[onethatcares]

3. dayam, I live in sunny floriduh and

that plant is huge(or hugh if you prefer ) I haven't seen land that large in a long long time, makes me want of quit working now and just travel the western states.

I'd be one gawking traveler for sure.