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The first tower standing at close to 200 feet

A first-of-its-type, enormous photo voltaic thermal farm that utilizes mirrors to tap into the sun’s heat, is under building in the desert in California, a small push from Las Vegas. On three,600 acres of land covered in tumble weeds and property to critters like the desert tortoise and rattle snakes, Silicon Valley startup BrightSource and contractor Bechtel are virtually a year into building of the 392 MW farm. There are  hundreds of posts stamped into the ground that will sooner or later maintain the mirrors (referred to as heliostats), and a single of the 3 450-foot plus central towers, which will play a crucial function in turning the sun’s rays into electricity, is slowly increasing up out of the dust.
In a scarce opportunity I obtained a opportunity to get a tour of the farm, named Ivanpah, which when entirely developed in 2013, is intended to virtually double the sum of commercial solar thermal electric power produced in the U.S. Although numerous solar thermal assignments are getting discussed by utilities and photo voltaic distributors, quite number of of this size — or even above a hundred MW — have been financed, permitted and are under building in the U.S.

BrightSource CEO John Woolard

Strolling close to Ivanpah is awe-inspiring for a couple of causes. The sheer dimensions — 5.6 square miles — is massive, and BrightSource states there were around 700 employees on the site on Monday, and at peak construction there will be about one,400 jobs. Whilst one particular of the central towers stood at shut to 200 ft previously, that tower will a lot more than double, increasing to 490 ft at the time that plant starts generating solar electricity.
Then there’s just the sheer factors of the desert. The temperature was a dry one hundred degrees as we surveyed the website — comprehensive with steel-toed boots, hardhats, security glasses and neon development vests — and workers commonly arrive on the site at 530AM and leave by 3PM to attempt to defeat the heat. Security precautions for employees (and visiting media) consist of things like checking under trucks and vehicles to make confident there are no tortoises shading on their own guiding tires.
A task of this dimension demands substantial funding, and BrightSource managed to safe funding from Google, NRG Electricity, and a $ 1.six billion mortgage ensure from the Division of Energy. BrightSource has also submitted to boost more funds by way of an IPO, which ought to put deliver a nice return for the company’s venture money traders, including VantagePoint Cash, Alstom, Morgan Stanley, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Chevron Technology Ventures.
Here’s a slideshow of photographs that I took throughout the tour of Ivanpah, near to a yr after it began building in October 2011.


The road to Ivanpah paved by tumble weed

A organic gasoline line runs close to Ivanpah

There's also a golfing course next door

There's a few transmission lines at Ivanpah

Posts that will hold the mirrors (heliostats)

Posts that will sooner or later hold the mirrors (heliostats)

A stack of heliostats and the machine that stamps the posts into the ground

Piles of metal and iron

The heliostats are made in units we did not get to see

Building materials

The first tower standing at close to 200 feet

1 of the central towers under building

Off of the crane on the top of the tower hangs an American flag

The base of the tower


Sketch of the fully completed tower

Bechtel exec Terry Copeland explains the layout of Ivanpah

The map of Ivanpah

NRG Energy exec John O'Brien

BrightSource CEO John Woolard




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