The world's largest solar power plant Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station has been operating in the California Mojave Desert since 2014. Its design capacity is about 400 megawatts: this amount of energy will be enough for 140 thousand homes in California.
The $ 2.2 billion project was implemented by the American company NRG Energy with the support of the US Department of Energy. 350 thousand giant mirrors located on a 13 sq. kilometers, reflect sunlight, heating the water and turning it into steam, which in turn turns a turbine that generates electricity.
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Experts emphasize that the new station will significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions: as if 72 thousand cars were removed from the roads of California. In such "sunny" states as Arizona, Nevada, California and others, 17 plots have already been allocated for the construction of similar solar power plants.
At the same time, projects are being implemented more slowly than planned, encountering, oddly enough, protests from the "green". The fact is that although in the long term such stations benefit the environment, in fact, the construction of the stations itself pollutes the areas allocated for them, depriving turtles and other representatives of the desert fauna of their usual habitats.
However, the United States plans to become the world leader in the use of clean energy. Now it occupies no more than 1% of the total energy market in the country, but by 2020, according to the adopted state program, a third of the volume of all produced energy should be transferred to renewable sources.
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This station is the largest in the world, with an area of 14.24 square kilometers (5.5 square miles). This object is called - Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. This station belongs to the type of thermal solar power plants.
This plant is capable of producing about 30% of all "thermal energy" produced in the United States. The facility has 3 towers 140 meters high surrounded by 300,000 garage door-sized mirrors. All of these mirrors focus the sun's rays on a collector located at the top of the tower. In the upper part of the tower there is also a water reservoir, where all the heat energy collected by the mirrors is directed.
Each tower has its own control center, plus there is a common control center from where the operation of the entire system is controlled. At the same time, according to the company that created the station, the system does not contain a storage for molten coolant salt, as in the case of smaller projects such as Crescent Dunes.
It is worth noting that each of the mirrors can change the tilt angle and tilt direction on command from the center. The mirrors are washed once every two weeks. As far as can be understood, a special mirror washer system is used + a special team of washers cleaning the mirrors at night. A proprietary SFINCS (Solar Field Integrated Control System) was created to control all mirrors.
The entire system consists of 22 million individual parts (rivets, bolts, etc. do not count).
The total cost of the project was US $ 2.2 billion, of which US $ 1.4 is a federal loan.
At the same time, water vapor is generated in the system, directed to the blades of turbines, which produce energy, which is quite enough for the needs of 140 thousand California households.
True, it was not without problems. For example, the focused rays of the sun burn birds flying over the station. This fact is the reason for the protests of the US environmental organizations. But, despite all the protests, the project was completed and put into operation.
Finally, the design still has room to develop. BrightSource Energy engineers are already proposing to eliminate water boilers and use special brine solutions to further improve the efficiency of the system while maintaining its environmental and energy qualities.
86 employees are employed at the station. The estimated period of operation is 30 years, during which the station will provide electricity to 140 thousand houses from the cities of the district.