By Tanaya Singh:
After long standing legal tangles and regulatory issues, the world’s biggest solar power plant opened for business today. An initiative by The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (SEGS), which is jointly owned by NRG Energy, Google, and BrightSource Energy; this plant will provide reliable solar electricity to more than 140,000 homes. The plant is located in Ivanpah Dry Lake, California.
[blockquote source=”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.[/blockquote]
To understand in simple words, there are 300,000 panels, each being 7 feet high and 10 feet wide, which will be computer controlled to focus the sun’s light on 450 foot tall towers where water is turned into steam to run turbines. According to Ivanpah’s website, the electricity from this project will avoid millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emission and other air pollutants, thus being equivalent to taking 70,000 cars off the road.
Spread across 5 square miles of land, the plant can be described in two perfect words; Beautiful and Smart. This is a huge project that the world can learn from. Here are a few pictures of the beauty that will light up a large number of Californian homes:
