Two mammoth solar plants to generate 800 megawatts in California

It's one thing to see competition unnecessarily push more and more megapixels into palm-sized cameras, but this game of leapfrog is one we can actually get behind. A pair of giant solar plants will soon be installed in San Luis Obispo County in California, covering 12.5 square miles and promising to generate around 800 megawatts of power. OptiSolar will be responsible for laying enough panels to generate 550 megawatts, while SunPower -- the same company associated with the 14 megawatt installation at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada (pictured) -- will provide the other 250. The energy will eventually be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, though any sort of pricing arrangements are strictly under wraps for now. C'mon Nevada, you gonna let the Golden State do you like that?

[Via Slashdot]

[Zinger314 @ Aug 18th 2008 10:16AM]

What's a mammoth solar panel? Is it a hairy, prehistoric solar panel?

[kempcross @ Aug 18th 2008 10:55AM]

That's a noun. This is an adjective.

[Jason @ Aug 18th 2008 11:05AM]

Actually, that and this are both pronouns.

[rock99rock @ Aug 18th 2008 11:19AM]

Stop it with all this verbiage.

[Nick @ Aug 18th 2008 11:39AM]

No, "this" and "that" are both pronouns. You need to study your use-mention distinction, son.

[James @ Aug 18th 2008 11:47AM]

I second rock99. Though I prefer to use the word "logorrhea" over "verbiage"... :)

[Josh @ Aug 18th 2008 12:41PM]

"All the -one words, All the -body words. each, either, neither are all singular pronouns"

[anonymous @ Aug 18th 2008 4:06PM]

Are you guys serious? He's saying "that" as in "the way you're interpreting the word mammoth" is a noun. "This" as in "the way the author used the word mammoth" is an adjective.

[halkonlar @ Aug 21st 2008 9:09AM]

Well, "this" and "that" are not just any ole pronouns, they exist in an exclusive category called "demonstrative pronouns."

[ipubs bastard child @ Aug 18th 2008 10:26AM]

800 Mw is pretty impressive for solar power but sadly not all countries can afford to lose so much space. Particularly tiny ones like england..

The idea of each home generating its own solar power and distributing that back to the grid is much more balanced than carving out dozens of square miles of countryside. Still, it's a step in the right direction.. away from nuclear and fossil.

[pfromg @ Aug 18th 2008 10:49AM]

you must be joking?
what exactly is so tiny about england that it cant spare a few thousand square miles for solar energy?

This is a case of priority.If you where to knock down a few hundred thousand of those of those ridiculously overpriced and under designed crap and old terraced houses, from the first industrial revolution (which england is riddled with), not only would england look nicer , but it wouldn't need so much energy.(Just because they are old , doesn't make them nice or worth keeping)

Your statement is typical of English mentality (and I am English). You have to invest before things get better, and a typical brits idea of investing is to buy a pile of crap , bodge it up as cheaply as possible, then flog it on to some desperate plonker for a silly profit.Repeat until you can afford a proper house.The end result is England as it is today. A huge pile of under-invested overpriced, bodged up, quite frankly shit houses.

As far as i am concerned , you can nock all those terraced houses down and replace them with solar arrays.It would do the country the world of good and a row of terraced houses is the ideal site for a nice long solar array.You could even build a pub at the end of each array to keep the environmentalists happy.

England has plenty of space, what it doesn't have is the required mentality.

[joebran @ Aug 18th 2008 10:50AM]

There is plenty of room in the desert. Every country is at least 2000 miles from a desert. The solar panels don't need to be close by.

[Numberzz @ Aug 18th 2008 11:05AM]

His comment does have some validity. Just under 1/2 of the population of California lives in about 1/5 of the state. Another 30% of the population lives in either The Bay Area or Sacramento. The other 20% is scattered over everywhere. We have a lot of room to spare.

[happy_penguin @ Aug 18th 2008 11:21AM]

"flog it on to some desperate plonker"

I just love Engadget. :D

[ipubs bastard child @ Aug 18th 2008 11:24AM]

@pfromg

That's a rather ideological way of looking at it and you're skirting issues which have little to do with what I was talking about.
Your sweeping statements about the state of housing in the UK may well be valid butI wouldnt want a plant like this within my line of sight.

The reality is that there's not going to be many places in the UK that would welcome 12 solid square miles of solar power plant and whilst replacing housing with it may sound like a good idea to you, you're then left with some rather pressing questions such as where to rehome all those people and who pays for it?

Knocking down hundreds of terraced houses, and replacing them with solar arrays isn't going to solve the problem that england is full of property developers barely meeting guidelines to make big bucks.

What is needed is a government with some real balls to enforce positive developments. The recent energy efficiency ratings were a good first step but has simply resulted in more paper work and cash grabbing agents rather than any real improvements, such as making it a legal requirement to provide renewable energy in each property, eg incorporating solar tech in the rooves of all new and resale homes.

In my opinion, this decentralised method is far more feasible in the UK. If we all contributed to the grid while we weren't using power, it'd make for a more efficient society and one that didnt have to worry about finding land specifically for this eyesore.

Now tell me I'm wrong.

[Courtney @ Aug 18th 2008 1:12PM]

It would also be worth considering the total acreage that any new power source would take up. Coal and nuclear plants aren't exactly small. 12.5 sq miles may actually not be any worse than the size of a coal/nuclear plant and its associated support buildings, parking lots, fuel storage, etc.

[cmj2405 @ Aug 18th 2008 11:42AM]

It's not space that's the problem - it's sunlight. Bearing in mind we are much, much further north than Nevada, the intensity of the sun light is much less. That's why it's impratical.

What is practical and extremely viable is wind, wave and tidal stream power

[James @ Aug 18th 2008 12:05PM]

I liked the idea of big box stores covering their flat roofs with solar panels. There must be a few Walmart's in England, start there! http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/walmarts_solar.php

@cmj: I live in Washington State (just south of Seattle) and we are known for for being the rainy Northwest yet plenty of people have solar panels up here. A quote from the Northwest Solar Center: "During the three summer months Seattle gets 97% as much sun as San Diego. On an annual basis, Seattle gets about 1/3 less than San Diego. Seattle recieves about 3.5 average peak sun hours per year. so a 1Kw solar array will generate about 1000 kWh's per year." http://northwestsolarcenter.org/Faq/faq.html

It's FREE energy, don't say it's "impractical".

[bolezhinkov @ Aug 18th 2008 12:25PM]

ok there is land everywhere, man. don't worry about that. think of how much space we use to farm animals . . . hundreds of acres for one farm to graze cattle and etc. if everyone just stopped eating dead animals we could free up so much land.

[pfromg @ Aug 18th 2008 12:27PM]

@ipubs

I wouldnt say you where wrong .
The core of my issue is that these old houses are way past it.They need replacing with something that not only looks nice, but uses a lot less energy (in particular to heat). Stuffing a bit of insulation in the loft is not doing gonna do it.
As you say, whats needed are some balls from government to stop giving out grants to houses that are environmentally way past their sell by dates and do something to encourage home owners to knock down and replace old terraced English housing with houses that will be suitable for the next 100 years..

The deal is simple.Encourage people (through financial motivation) to nock down old houses and replace them with near zero energy houses. Then theres no need for fields of collectors.

[BigD145 @ Aug 18th 2008 1:30PM]

People have roofs, yes? There you go.

[Richard Lai @ Aug 18th 2008 10:32AM]

Just had a thought: you know those big power plant chimneys? We can cover them with solar panels as well, perhaps?

[Zinger314 @ Aug 18th 2008 10:48AM]

But if you cover the chimneys, where will the smoke dissipate?

[claude @ Aug 18th 2008 10:58AM]

the sides or the top.... XP

[Richard Lai @ Aug 20th 2008 8:56PM]

Zinger314: of course NOT covering the tops! Jeez Louise...

[Rick @ Aug 18th 2008 7:28PM]

That's so awesome. My only concerns is that the pricing structure takes into account that once they cover their upfront costs, that they would only have to cover operating costs making their profit margin that much greater. I'd hate to think that rates would not decrease once they covered the cost of the panels, setup, etc and are getting free power from the sun and not pass that along to the consumer eventually.

[jake @ Aug 18th 2008 10:39AM]

only 410 more required for time travel

[vileta2 @ Aug 18th 2008 10:40AM]

ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIGAWATTS??!!

[Raphael Salgado @ Aug 18th 2008 12:34PM]

It's a little short of 1.21Gw. Perhaps if they overclock it a bit and use a faster bus...

Just don't let AMD do it - their numerical designation since the Athlon hasn't been helpful.

[Parker @ Aug 18th 2008 10:43AM]

Nuclear is the way forward, England is losing all its counrty side already to bloody council houses and housing estates, we dont have enough money for giant projects like this

[Kári Rafn @ Aug 18th 2008 5:12PM]

There isn't enough uranium in the world for nuclear power to be "the way"

[ardentior @ Aug 19th 2008 12:59AM]

@Kari
You really don't know anything about nuclear power do you? Leave the comments to the professionals please. Uranium is far from the only fissile material on the Earth. You can start here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reactor_technology#Current_technologies and you can follow up with some Nuclear Engineering seminars at your local university.

[Bleck @ Aug 18th 2008 10:47AM]

So why haven't we started building hundreds of ultra-jumbo large Solar Panels in the Sahara Desert again?

[pfromg @ Aug 18th 2008 10:53AM]

Because we don't want to have our collective balls dangling in those hands this time around ?

[The Dude @ Aug 18th 2008 1:10PM]

probably because deserts are full of sand and tend to be windy & sand + wind = lots of broken solar panels... By the way this place is right in my area, probably a 10-15 minute drive north & PG&E, the guys running Diablo Canyon nuclear plant which is probably 10 minutes southwest, is going to be buying up a bunch of their energy from these guys, it should be AWESOME!

[ddub @ Aug 18th 2008 3:13PM]

I didn't realize The Dude had moved from venice beach to slo.

[Kári Rafn @ Aug 18th 2008 5:16PM]

because the longer the power lines that transfer the energy from the power plant to where the electricity gets used are the more gets wasted, because power lines don't conduct electricity 100%. And as far as I know there isn't THAT much of energy hungry industries in or reasonably close to the Sahara desert.

[The Dude @ Aug 18th 2008 10:02PM]

@ ddub
?

[klietza @ Aug 18th 2008 10:54AM]

Good idea. But no where does it mention the price the cost of the actual panels, maintence fees (when a good wind comes and tears panels off), or if and when it would become economically viable for such a solution.

Also.. 12.5 sq miles! I know there is a lot of unused land, but to see something like this would be an eyesore to anyone. (cool to see the first couple times yes, but eventually ugly).

I don't imagine a full blown coal plant takes much more than 1 sq mile. Yes ugly, but more efficent. If carbon emissions is your beef, don't get me started. Go talk with China or any "third world" developing countries about your green ideals. US is not the problem here.

I want solar to work but the more and more of it I see, the less faith I have in it.

If only they invested this money in clean and undeinably safe nuclear.

[David @ Aug 20th 2008 12:31PM]

The stated area is the size of the facility. Not all of the area is for actual array deployment.

As for the cost, that's irrelevant. What matters is the cost per kilowatt-hr that consumers pay. How a company structures its internal costs is its business, assuming they are funding the endeavor themselves. If they did't think they could get long-term costs to the point where they can sell the final energy output profitably yet at a low cost, they wouldn't be getting into this business.

[Curtis Joslin @ Aug 18th 2008 11:25AM]

It's the mentality like yours that we don't more clean energy, and the initiative to make it more clean and more cost effective.
Nuclear has its problems too you know. The cost to build a nuclear plant is outrageous now (due to safety concerns) and the price and man work for enriched uranium is quite the feat too.
I am all for ideas like this.. we honestly need to have the government subsidize renewable energy initiatives and tax the coal and gas plants more. if anything think if future generations and smog levels those asthmatics will have to live in.

Seriously just use your noodle a bit more before spewing all that crap out of your mouth.

[kal326 @ Aug 18th 2008 12:04PM]

@klietza
So are you volunteering to have the next nuclear reactor built in your backyard? If so by all means have at it. On the other hand when is the last time you heard about a solar array going critical and releasing trace amounts of radioactive material into the air? That or leaking it into the water like a recent US sub? Solar may not be the best option, but there is plenty of unused area in the southwest, Texas, and even the plains towards the Rockies that would be great for solar energy. Not to say that nuclear is not a viable and mostly safe alternative energy source, but whats a few hundred miles or so of uninhabited land lost to solar farms really hurt?

[James @ Aug 18th 2008 12:26PM]

Okay fine. Have your Nuclear Power Plant. It won't take up your precious 12 sq. miles.

But what are you going to do with your spent nuclear fuel rods? Do you have enough land to store them for thousands of years? That's one of the problems that we are facing here in the US.

http://library.thinkquest.org/17940/texts/nuclear_waste_storage/nuclear_waste_storage.html

And if you plan on just storing them far away, just realize that means these potential nuclear disasters are on your roads and train tracks to where ever you think you might have room to store them.

Nuclear is a wonderful SHORT TERM solution for a LONG TERM problem.

[paul34 @ Aug 18th 2008 12:55PM]

While nuclear is obviously the superior solution, we need a mix of everything. Does it make sense to do ONLY this type of huge solar installation? No, of course not, but why not do it IN ADDITION to other sources?

Also, coal isn't as dirty as you think. Even compared to 10 years ago, today's coal plants are significantly cleaner given the right scrubbers have been installed. Sulfur dioxide emissions have been reduced to nearly 99% on many plants in the Southeast.

If we can get true clean coal technology funded and going, such as carbon capture and sequestration, then we'll see coal that would emit less than 1% of the greenhouse gases and other pollutants that come out of them today. Less than 1%! Theoretically, it is even possibly to completely eliminate all greehouse emissions.

Nonethless, we need nuclear, which is safer and more efficient than ever before. The only problem is the massive cost of these projects, which hasn't come down any since the 70s. There is also the issue of nuclear waste, but if the US would just start recycling spent fuel the situation could be improved significantly (as many other nuclear-powered nations have been doing for years). There are certain cavetas with recycled fuel, though, and the energy required to recycle fuel isn't free, but its still a better solution than burying it in Yucca mountain which quite frankly, will probably never be finished and will never receive the funding it needs to be fully built.

[Lance Boyle @ Aug 18th 2008 2:15PM]

Actually, the US is a big part of the problem here. Bigger than China, and way bigger than these 3rd world countries you mention. See, industrialization means more mass pollution, there really should be no surprise there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

Even if you were to assume these figures are a couple of years old, we in the US are bigger polluters per head than China. So either way, we're not the ecological wonderland you imagine.

[Ordeith @ Aug 18th 2008 3:55PM]

So much nuclear misinformation here.. when will the prols educate themselves before talking?

kal326: When was the last time you heard of a Nuclear plant going critical and releasing radioactive material? Modern nuclear plants have a catalyst that is required for the reaction to take place. If conditions are not ideal the reaction stops. Due to this development a modern nuclear facility cannot "go critical" it would break the laws of physics for it to do so.

James: Advances in the use of Nuclear fuel have the harmful half-life down to hundreds of years instead of thousands, and there are advances promising to push this down into mere decades in the near future. This of course requires modern nuclear facilities, not the 40+ year old antiques the US uses.

Modern Nuclear facalities can also operate on the spent fuel from older plants, greatly reducing the ammount of materials needed and the storage space required for spent fuel. Once the spent fuel is processed at the modern facility the remaining harmful half-life is also reduced to the hundreds of years instead of the thousands.

The modernization of Nuclear and the environmentalists refusal to accept is the reason the founder of Greenpeace left the organization.

France at least knows the benefits and gat a majority of their energy from modern nuclear facilities. Other countries even pay France to take their spent fuel and run it through Frances' nuclear plants.

You would think the US would build some modern nuclear facilities if for no other reason than to process the spent fuel from their older nuclear plants and make it safer for storage.

[klietza @ Aug 18th 2008 4:13PM]

Wow Ordeith. A bank of useful knowledge. I just came back to this article and find all this hate mail that is so confusing. Are people just this blind by the fact that nuclear IS a proven Alternative Energy. I won't get into any of the politics of all of this but trying to explain that we are no longer dealing with the 60's and 70's technology, but rather a far more stable kind of power plant can be a frustrating debate. How many of the member of the Sierra club post on engadget anyways?

To whatever post said that solar is free energy... you're an idiot. Go fill your rooftop with solar panels and tell me how much free costs.

Oh and I will gladly live next to a Nuclear Power Plant. Springfield doesn't seem to mind, nor do I. I truly feel driving my car is FAR more dangerous than living next to a nuclear plant.

[Rocketboy @ Aug 18th 2008 10:56AM]

I wonder how much taxpayer money is going into this.

[Wonderkid @ Aug 18th 2008 10:57AM]

@pfromg: You are spot on. (I'm also British and agree in full with your comments.) To be fair, our OLD houses - really old ones, are superbly built - that is why they are still there. It is the new ones that are terrible. I know two people whose houses are under 10 and 5 years old, and the walls are cracking, the tiling and fitments falling off and thin walls. Your comment about investing in the future is spot on too. this is why Asia is booming as an economy - it invested in high speed broadband 10 years ago when we were on dialup. Same with solar, we either build nuclear power stations and are left with tonnes of waste, or use the sun - after all, it's a gift from g-d!

[Xerxes910 @ Aug 18th 2008 11:10AM]

America needs to use solar and nuclear and Nevada is a perfect place. So much of the land is owned by the government and is barren that it has more than enough land to spare for some very large solar plants. They also need to get off their high horse and allow the nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain to open. Let's all remember above and below ground testing at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site have made the area a no-mans land for centuries to come. My dad used to tell me about watching the above ground tests when he was a kid growing up in Henderson. I think this is one place the environmentalists can't use injunctions to stop the processes since we already killed any eco-system long ago.