It looks like what would happen if an industrial facility crashed into an art installation.
Take 300,000 computer-controlled mirrors, each 7 feet high and 10 feet wide. Control them with computers to focus the Sun's light to the top of 459-foot towers, where water is turned into steam to power turbines. Bingo: you have the world's biggest solar power plant, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is now operational and delivering solar electricity to California customers. At full capacity, the facility's trio of 450-foot high towers produces a gross total of 392 megawatts (MW) of solar power, enough electricity to provide 140,000 California homes with clean energy and avoid 400,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to removing 72,000 vehicles off the road.
http://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-largest-solar-plant-started-creating-electr-1521998493
How does the output compare with just covering the area with PV panels, I wonder, in terms of cost effectiveness?
ReplyDeleteChris Blackmore According to this article, not well :
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wired.com/2016/05/huge-solar-plant-caught-fire-thats-least-problems/
When the plant was just a proposal in 2007, the cost of electricity made using Ivanpah’s concentrated solar power was roughly the same as that from photovoltaic solar panels. Since then, the cost of electricity from photovoltaic solar panels has plummeted to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour (compared to 15 to 20 cents for concentrated solar power) as materials have gotten cheaper.
Rhys Taylor Thanks, it's as I suspected. Still, the thing needed to be built, to see what went wrong. At least hackers have not yet found a way to turn the mirrors to fry aircraft...
ReplyDeleteRhys Taylor .. but you can't teach solar panels to incinerate birds.
ReplyDelete