The World's Largest Solar Plant Started Creating Electricity Today

[88m3]

Attila Nagy
Filed to: SOLAR POWER

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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.

Long-mired by regulatory issues and legal tangles, the enormous solar plant–jointly owned byNRG Energy, BrightSource Energy and Google–opened for business today.

From the official news release:

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.

Sprawling across a staggering 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, it looks goddamn beautiful. Just look at these amazing images.:

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The World's Largest Solar Plant Started Creating Electricity Today

 

[joeychizzle]

The marvels of technology.
Goddamn I wouldn't wana be in them towers though, gonna be hot as fuuuuuckkkk

 

[tmonster]

MOAR!!!!!!!!

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

140,000 homes? that's it?

 

[Serious]

subs.....

@Broletariat

Yeah I've read about this...

 

[Teal.]

i know where i'm setting up when the world goes crazy

 

[RAX 010]

sweet

 

[Type Username Here]

140,000 homes? that's it?

Here we go

 

[Domingo Halliburton]

Here we go

it just seems like a small number that's all I'm saying. does it not?

 

[Type Username Here]

it just seems like a small number that's all I'm saying. does it not?

Humans have not mastered using Solar energy more efficiently yet. This is a good way to prove that it can be done on a larger scale than has been done before. You have to look at the engineering and historical infrastructure of electricity and you'll see that the original plants had limitations as well. It didn't go from 0 to 100 in an instant. It took decades to perfect the traditional methods and we still aren't efficient there as we would like to be.

It's why I also support Nuclear Energy as a means to cover the gaps in transitioning from fossil fuels

 

[88m3]

it just seems like a small number that's all I'm saying. does it not?

Germany Hits Historic High, Gets 74 Percent Of Energy From Renewables






fukking french or going to block the alstom bid if it goes through the government will probably collapse after they doubled down today.

 

[Orbital-Fetus]

we need more of this stuff.
much, much more.

they just put a bunch of wind turbines up along Lake Erie in Buffalo.
i think that look really sleek and they make clean power.

U.S. government should subsidize or at least give tax breaks to everyone who uses solar power.
solar panels on top of every structure possible.

 

[Idaeo]

Brehs...i saw this a couple of weeks ago driving out to Vegas.

It looked like something out of a sci-fi movie on some real shyt. There's four tall towers surrounded by a field of reflective panels on the ground. About 100 feet horizontally away from the top of the tower, there's this ball of light floating in midair.

The whole set up looks alien...I looked it up afterwards and wasn't surpised that Google was behind it.

 

[The Odum of Ala Igbo]

Africa needs to master solar energy. The Sahara desert would be a perfect place for many countries to capitalize on increasingly efficient solar energy technology.

 

[PikaDaDon]

Nuclear fusion will replace all of this.