the largest solar power plant in the world is now online in ivanpah valley, ca. ivanpah leverages proven solar thermal technology while maintaining a low environmental impact.  the plant boasts 347,000 mirrors and is 4x the size of ny central park provides energy to 140,000 homes in california. the plant has some unique supporters including google, and was brought online thanks to a massive loan by the u.s. department of energy for $us 1.6 billion dollars.  so how is this plant so massive?  take a look at these numbers:

• produces 392 gross megawatts
• prevents 400 tons of carbon being released into our atmosphere annually
• $650m in wages and employee earnings in the first 30 years

those are big numbers from the huge plant, the world's largest. 

so what prompted google to get involved with such a massive undertaking?   google was the early backer of the project, pledging $168m in 2011.  google is very interested in investing in cleantech and up to the ivanpah investment, they had already invested $250m in other projects.  and the ivanpah project represented a next step in the proof of concept of power towers.

the power tower, or heliostats,  is really a solar furnace.  solar rays are reflected from mirrors and then focused on the tower.  in this thermal engineering applcation, the solar rays focused on the power tower turn water in the tower into steam that powers a turbine.  power towers can contain water or molten salt.   other examples of this thermal engineering applcation include:

 table courtesy of wikipedia

google's involvement with heliostat's didn't being and end with an investment.  in this 2011 video, google's heliostat team re-thought the entire heliostat architecture in order to reduce the cost of concentrating solar thermal power. this led to new approaches and different ways to tackle problems. this video covers the 3 guiding principles of the research, and how the team took a different approach to reducing costs.  you can read their paper on the topic at google.org here.