Breakthrough: Concentrated Solar Power All Over Southwest US

Breakthrough: Concentrated Solar Power All Over Southwest US
by David Sassoon - Jan 17th, 2008
* Clean Energy
* Big Business
* Clean Tech Sector
* Investors

 

....the solar power plant now being developed all over the American southwest by a company called eSolar. Notice: no smokestacks; no coal chutes; no rail lines stretching to the horizon for coal trains to approach. It's a beautiful sight.

Notice, too, all around the powerhouse containing the steam turbine and generator are the thermal receiver towers and mirror arrays that make this thing work using only the abundant heat energy of the sun.

This is not photovoltaic technology that directly converts the sun's rays into electric current. This is thermal technology that collects and amplifies the sun's heat energy to create steam on an industrial scale, steam that spins turbines to generate power.

You might say it's a giant water boiler, but instead of burning coal, igniting natural gas or splitting atoms to create steam power, this plant uses the heat that naturally falls on the earth.

Google announced today it is investing $10 million in eSolar to help produce utility-scale power cheaper than coal, as part of its world-changing RE<C