We had some really great threads last year, with the following four nominated for the Thread of the Year award in this January's Environment Site Awards ceremony.
Solar Energy ForumI have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy.... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago. ~Sir George Porter
Presenting the solar-electric plant at the Air Force's Nellis Base. The plant, which just went online this week, is the largest single photovoltaic plant in the U.S., beating out Google's by a hefty margin.
The plant uses traditional silicon PV cells and provides enough power to juice about a quarter of the Air Force base. Really, 14 MW is still a pretty insignficant amount of energy. And this plant doesn't approach the production power of Nevada-One, a solar thermal plant. But many people believe that the true future of solar power is converting the sun's energy directly into electricity instead of using the heat from the sun.
Re: U.S.'s Largest Solar-Electric Plant Goes Online
Quote:
Originally Posted by hefler
The plant uses traditional silicon PV cells and provides enough power to juice about a quarter of the Air Force base. Really, 14 MW is still a pretty insignficant amount of energy. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articl...leted-404.html
Yes I agree. In the overall context of electricity production 14MW is not all that much power. It is also a somewhat misleading figure. If they are expecting the plant to produce about 30,000,000 kWh annually, that equates to an average output of 3.4MW. Not a lot.
Perhaps about 0.00075% of US production....
*edited to include 'as in particularly the cases where they are facing in opposite directions to each other'*
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'There are only two ways to live your life, accept things as they are or take responsibility for changing them' Bhagat Singh (even if you don't agree with how he chose to apply this philosophy)
Following the links on the post brings up the Solar One project which is a beaut.It will be interest to see how well this technology develops in its use in Spain.
Following the links on the post brings up the Solar One project which is a beaut.
Yes, but rated at 64 MW, it is still peanuts.
And even being optimistic about utility factor, average output is probably going to be around 20MW.
I'm not knocking it, but it should be looked at in context.
U.S.'s Largest Solar-Electric Plant Goes Online
I've cropped it down to a more manageable size. If you wish to display the original in its full glory you can do so here 
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