US officially commissions world’s largest solar park

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The largest solar park in the world has officially been commissioned in the United States. The field of mirrors, which covers an area of ​​approximately 13 square kilometers, is located on the border of the US states of California and Nevada.

The solar power plant, called the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, is owned by three parties, one of which is Google, Phys.org reports. The other two companies involved are NRG Energy and BrightSource Energy. The energy production is about 377 megawatts; that should be enough to power 140,000 households.

For the entire solar power plant, an amount of 2.2 billion dollars had to be deposited during construction, which was paid by the three companies. 350,000 mirrors were set up for this, which are jointly controlled by a computer system. These mirrors are aimed at towers with boilers in which water is heated, which in turn drive turbines in which electricity is generated from steam. This means that it is not about conventional solar panels that convert sunlight directly into electricity, but about a concentrated solar power park.

The Ivanpah is currently the largest solar power station in the world, but it is likely that larger power stations will open in the near future. Work is underway on large solar power stations at various locations, including India. The park would have a capacity of 4 gigawatts, considerably more than Ivanpah.

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