Solar Reflectors
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Power towers use large flat mirrors to focus sunlight onto a receiver located on a tower. The receiver contains fluid or molten salt, which is heated to generate steam, which is used to turn a turbine at the foot of the tower to generate electricity. Two power towers called Solar One and Solar Two in Barstow, California, produce utility-scale power (up to 10 megawatts) from sunlight. Solar Two uses 2,000 mirrors to focus solar radiation onto molten salt. Typical solar-to-electric power plants or concentrated solar power plants require 5 – 10 acres of land for every megawatt of generating capacity. By this standard, a 200 MW solar plant in West Texas would need about 1,300 acres (two square miles) of land. |
Figure 11 |
