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 distribu...