The Villanueva photovoltaic power plant is operated by the Italian company Enel Green Power in the desert near Villanueva, Mexico.
Credit: Alfredo Estrella / AFP
In a quest to cut the cost of clean electricity, power utilities around the world are supersizing their solar farms.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in southern Egypt, where what will be the world’s largest solar farm — a vast collection of more than 5 million photovoltaic panels — is now taking shape. When it’s completed next year, the $4 billion Benban solar park near Aswan will cover an area 10 times bigger than New York’s Central Park and generate up to 1.8 gigawatts of electricity.
That’s roughly the output of two nuclear power plants combined and almost double the planned capacity of the vast Villanueva facility now growing in the Mexican state of Coahuila — currently the largest facility in the Americas. (The largest solar farm in the U.S. is the 580-megawatt Solar Star facility near […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
I have spent years studying electronic components and the products they are made into. The knowledge those years have given me has allowed me to understand that any system, especially the “space-solar” system really scares me , because electronic components and products that that are made from them are prone to break down and that breakdown could become very harmful for the reason that they break down and for the reason that they can be “hacked”, just like our computer systems and new phones are “hacked”. For these reasons, I do not think the Japanese “space-solar” system is a very good idea, and there seems to be too much that could and probably will go wrong with this particular type of system. With the new types of battery systems evolving in the scientific community, I believe that the ground based systems are the better choice and the safer choice for the future. I also believe that the wind alternative is also a very good way to get electricity for our increasing need for more power.
We should absolutely not have solar farms, especially in space. Solar should be deployed on houses and in neighborhoods. Here are the reasons:
1. In case of natural disaster or war, solar farms would not provide power because they are subject to damage and the power lines connecting them with consumers can be easily damaged. If power was being generated on a house and neighborhood level, power could be restored and borrowed more easily. It would still be important to have a grid in the case of a huge hurricane or tornado, but most roofs would remain after most disasters.
2. Solar farms should be under government control, not private. As long as private companies control power, we will get Enroned over and over again.
3. Decreasing the use of power lines would be a big savings of money and land. Since power is lost in transmission, local generation means having to produce less power, which would be cheaper and warm the planet less.