I love Arizona, I really do. I’m a desert-dweller and there’s no two ways about it, but, I’ll be the first to admit, there are bits of Arizona that are pretty darned desolate.
Gila Bend is one of those places.
Dry, parched, flat and desolate – just exactly the sort of place for one of the world’s largest solar power plants, which is what was announced today.
Arizona Public Service (APS) the electric company that supplies my home, has announced the building of a $1 billion, 280 megawatt solar transfer power station. The station will use tracking parabolic mirrors over 3 square miles of the desert, concentrating sunlight on a petroleum-based liquid, heating it to over 750 degrees. The heat from the liquid is used to boil water to turn steam turbines. The plant also uses molten salt to continue to produce heat for several hours after the sun goes down. At peak operation, it can power 70,000 homes.
The plant will be operated by the Spanish company, Abengoa Solar, and should be operational by 2011. This joins a second 250 Megawatt station that was recently jointly announced between a trio of Arizona power companies.
Read more about it here:
centredaily.com => APS Announces New Solar Power Plant, Among Workd’s Largest
Technorati Tags: Solar Power, Science, Technology