Ivanpah Solar Facility – The World’s Largest Solar Thermal Energy Plant
The Engineer
The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility is one of the largest solar thermal energy facilities in the world, situated on the border of California and Nevada in Mojave Desert.
It is a $2.2 billion project. 170,000 heliostat mirrors will be installed in this project which will help us in directing the solar energy on boilers that are positioned in centralized towers spread across the 4000 acre area. Steam will be produced as the water will start to heat up in the centralized boilers and this steam will help in driving the turbines to generate electricity.
The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility has the maximum ability of producing 392MW of power and its annual production is predicted to be fixed at 1,079,232 MWh.
Coupled with the California power grid, the Ivanpah facility has still not started adding power to the grid and is in test stages. Nevertheless, the experts expect the facility to contribute towards the energy demands of California by the end of this year.
