[Graeme]

Stirling Energy takes on the solar power challenge

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he dish is a prototype for 70,000 that a small Phoenix company hopes to plant on two 7,000-acre solar farms in the California desert over the next seven years.

If fully built out, the two solar plants will be two of the biggest in the world. Together, they'd almost double the amount of solar energy produced nationwide, power 1 million Southern California homes and cleanly generate nearly as much electricity as two smog-producing coal plants.

[emersonbiggins]

Been waiting for this for a while - looks promising on its face.

[mos6507]

It's good but 7,000 acres required to replace two coal power plants is an unacceptably large tradeoff in land for energy. I'm all for solar but I don't think it can scale enough to be a drop-in replacement for coal plants. It's going to have to involve a lot of conservation (like a full switchover to CFL and then LED lighting).

[yesplease]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'I')t's good but 7,000 acres required to replace two coal power plants is an unacceptably large tradeoff in land for energy.

[TreeFarmer]

MOS6507 it may not be as bad as it first seems on the land use. 7000 acres to replace two plants is 3500 ac per plant. I suspect that the average coal fired plant sits on 200 to 300 acres of land. When you couple this with the size of a mining operation necessary to furnish it with coal, maybe as much as 1000 acres that is occupied with the mine, storage and sorting... it seems to take about 3 times as much land for this solar powered system as for the coal system.

At this state of the solar buildout it does not seem too bad.

TF

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TreeFarmer', '
')At this state of the solar buildout it does not seem too bad.

[yesplease]

There are plenty of small towns in the Mojave, and I would hope an engineer working there would have the common sense to use an efficient vehicle for the commute. Even if there were 100 workers commuting 100 miles/day each with 25mpg vehicles for a plant like Solar One, the plant would still make about a hundred times more energy than they use during their commutes. Not that they wouldn't car/vanpool or take the bus or switch to more efficient vehicles if oil availability/price as an issue.