Ivanpah - The World's Largest Solar Power Plant - Online Today In The Mojave Desert

The future - at least, one potential solution to our energy and climate problems - is here now.

As reported by Gizmodo, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System - the world's largest solar plant, comprising 300,000 computer-controlled mirrors and 450-foot centralized solar power towers powering turbines with steam - started generating electricity today in the Mojave Desert on the California-Nevada border.

Dedicated today by Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and jointly owned by US-based NRG Energy, US-Israeli BrightSource Energy and Google (which put up $168 million to help build it), Ivanpah is the world's biggest solar power plant.

The remarkable photographs tell some of the story, but essentially - according to the official news release - Ivanpah (located on the site of a silver mining ghost town from the mid-1880s) is capable of generating sufficient electricity to power 140,000 California homes with clean energy, and avoid 400,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year - or the equivalent of removing 72,000 vehicles from the road.

Read more about the remarkable Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System at Gizmodo, on Wikipedia, at CleanTechnica and SiliconBeat.

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Timeless

I haven't written on this blog since 2021, soon after Joe Biden became President and the horrors of the OG Thug passed. I'm still here, I'm still enjoying life, but I have to say that this November worries me greatly. The better part of me cannot believe that America will return a criminal insurgent to the White House...but a tiny part of me wonders if such insanity is possible. I no longer have the faith in humanity I once had; I have most of it but the Fetid Pumpkin took the rest. We'll see come November. Do whatever you can to make it not so.

Alexander Stuart

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