Tag Archives: Ivanpah

Solar flares?

March 22, 2016 Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A. 3 Comments

Looks like the idea of using heliostat for electricity is getting worse.

When I reported on the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System last June, we were waiting for it to begin delivering 377 MW of electricity to PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) customers. The plant, which was built by Bechtel, uses more than 170,000 mirrors (that’s NOT a typo) to concentrate the sun’s energy on three (3) solar steam generators some 450 feet up in the air. That steam runs generators to produce electricity for PG&E customers.

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Broken Promises?

June 25, 2015 Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A. 3 Comments

I wrote about the Chevron plant that converts solar energy to steam, so that they can recover oil using a smaller carbon footprint. This Coalinga (CA) plant is pretty darned big. It’s on some 65 acres and nearly 8000 mirrors that track the sun. (They are called heliostats.) And, it yields some 29 MW of steam.

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