Near Ivanpah, in the Mojave Desert, California, the largest solar thermal power plant in the world has been activated. It can generate at least a power of 392 MW of electricity thanks to its 173,500 mirrors that focus sunlight on three towers (photo ©Sbharris). This project has cost $2.2 billion and received a loan of $1.6 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Ivanpah solar power plant project was developed by BrightSource Energy, a company specializing in solar power plants, along with Bechtel, the largest U.S. company in the field of engineering and construction. The largest investor in the project is NRG Energy, Inc., a leading national electricity supplier. There has also been an investment by Google, but later the company declared that it would no longer invested in CSP (Concentrating Solar Power) projects because photovoltaics is becoming cheaper and cheaper.

The Ivanpah solar power plant occupies about 4,000 acres (1,600 ha), filled up by mirrors that focus sunlight onto three towers where there are tanks filled with water that boils fueling steam turbines. However, this isn’t a molten salt central, which optimizes the heat absorption running even at night. Even if the top of the towers gets very hot during the day, when the Sun goes down the temperature drops until the turbines stop working.

During the day, the Ivanpah solar power plant can still provide electricity to about 140,000 homes coming on average, twice when it reaches the maximum power in the middle of the day. Under optimal conditions it can really generate a lot of energy and it’s estimated that its production of renewable energy will avoid the production of 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

This type of solar power plant has its strengths and weaknesses given that in certain conditions it’s really efficient and the use of water is optimized in a closed loop but when the conditions aren’t good it loses much efficiency. For this reason, this type of power plant can be built in desert places where the weather is almost always good allowing to exploit the area the best way.

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