SOLAR THERMAL PLANT

OPERATION OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST THERMAL SOLAR ENERGY PLANT STARTED IN CALIFORNIA; OVERVIEW OF ITS MAIN CHARACTERISTICS. (from an article by Rodrigo Herrera Vegas  | Para LA NACION, May.26, 2014)

Last February BrightSource Energy announced that the solar thermal plant Ivanpah started functioning. ¿What is the importance of this announcement? Besides the fact that it is a new step towards generation of renewable energy, the outstanding part of this announcement is that the plant is the world’s largestin its type. 

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generation System  (Sistema de Generación de Energía Solar Ivanpah) is located in the Mohave dessert, California, USA, 60 km from Las Vegas. The plant is composed of thousands of mirrors that extend on 3.500 acres of Federal land. It has 173,500 heliostats (2 mirrors per each 15.42 sqm/heliostat), equipped with a Solar field Integrated control system  - SFINCS - for maximum energy distribution efficiency. It transfers 377 MW (NET), 392 MW (Gross) of energy through a system of steam boilers with a water consumption of 100 acre feet/year (123.000 cubic meters per year).  It avoids the emission of 400,000 metrict tons of CO2 per year and gives electricity to 140.000 homes in California.  

The Project was backed jointly by NRG Energy, Google and BrightSource Energy, and it is estimated that it cost U$ 2 billion, of which 1,6 billion loaned by the US government.

The plant location was not capriccious: the Mohave dessert receives solar light during between 330 and 350 days in the year, with a predominance of dry air. With Ivanpah the state of California seeks to meet the objective of providing 33% of its electricity from renewable energies by the year 2020.

Watch a video of this solar thermal plant click: Ivanpah. (In this same video a number of intersting side options for solar thermal energy are presented, from US$ 50 home heaters to recent technological advances in the capture of solar energy).

Full article (in Spanish): http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1694050-la-energia-solar-termica-busca-consolidar-sus-avances