US Army Builds 500MW Solar Power System, Upgrade Would Push to 1.25GW

Wow. Now that's a solar power system.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10300756-54.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

C|Net said:

The U.S. Army on Friday detailed what it expects to be the Department of Defense's largest solar energy project--a 500-megawatt installation at the Fort Irwin base in the Mojave Desert in California.

The solar power will be generated by both photovoltaic panels and solar concentrators, which make heat that is converted into electricity through a turbine. The equipment will be installed in phases, according to Clark Energy Group, which was chosen along with Acciona Solar Power to do the installation. By comparison, the generating capacity of a natural gas or coal power plant could be between 600 megawatts and 800 megawatts.

Ultimately, the base's solar power plant could supply 1,250 gigawatt hours per year at Fort Irwin, which among other things has facilities for training and for communicating with NASA missions. The average U.S. home consumes about 11,000 kilowatt-hours per year so the full Army installation could power well over 100,000 homes.

Click to expand...

velocityg4 said:

Though that is quite impressive. How many batteries will they be throwing out every year. They will need them or else the plant would be pointless at night or when it is quite cloudy.

Click to expand...

I would think it's reasonable to assume that, given that they have no real need for high energy density in their storage media, they can pick something with somewhat better lifetime. (Of course, in non-emergency situations, they probably can also flush excess energy into the grid and then buy it back at night). But you're right in the sense that overall environmental impact of clean energy is an important part of the picture and better metrics need to be developed so that it's a transparent part of considering (and reporting on) these projects.

I just wonder if they had put that money towards Nuclear Fusion would it have been figured out. So that we could have a truly clean energy.

Click to expand...

To be honest, having worked in the past loosely in this area of research, I think it may work eventually, but I have serious personal doubts, based on the research, that injecting large amounts of money into fusion research is likely to speed up the development process dramatically. I think it's going to probably be realistic one day, but I don't think a billion or a trillion dollars could make it happen in 2012 or 2013 instead of 20-whatever....