PG&E building solar plants in Mojave Desert

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. will be building 3 solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which will generate enough electricity to power more than 375,000 homes. The plants will be creating solar thermal energy, using mirrors that focus sunlight on centralized towers and boil the water within the towers to create steam which will then turn turbines. The steam once cooled, can be reused again as it flows back to be boiled again. The solar plants will be designed and built by BrightSource Energy Inc of Oakland and the first plant is planned to open in 2011. PG&E would buy the power from the facilities to feed it back into our power grids. One of the benefits of using solar thermal energy is that the heat energy can be stored cost effectively, efficiently, and the energy can be created on demand as opposed to using solar panels which can only create power when the Sun is shining. Solar Thermal plants are a great way of using natural resources to provide electricity but the costs are currently still really high as producing the plants will cost around $2 to $3 billion.

A reference to an older post about Solar Thermal Plants can be found here about a company called Ausra with a nice diagram about how Solar Thermal Energy works.

via SFGate

Add comment April 1st, 2008 Alex