World's biggest solar farm planned in Fresno, California. A San Francisco company said Friday it plans to build the world's largest solar power farm near Fresno, California. The 80-megawatt farm is to occupy as much as 640 acres (260 hectares) and upon completion in 2011 will be 17 times the size of the largest U.S. solar farm, said Cleantech America LLC, a privately held 2-year-old company. Sweet, Wildkow
I wonder which type of solar energy transducer is most efficient, in terms of occupied acreage, component maintenance, environmental impacts and so on: the photovoltic array like this farm, or the parabolic mirror arrays that boil water at the focus such as at Barstow. Mark Baird Alameda CA
For something like this, I wonder if the panels will track with the sun, or just be fixed to the ground. meaning... is the added energy gained by facing them at the sun more than the expense of the tracking mechanism.. Should be an interesting project to see when they get it going
I wonder if this is the Tehachapi Renewable energy project. Our city of Chino Hills has agreed to fight Edison to the tune of $600K Residents are afraid of the electromagnetic energy that might harm them and their homes,(but they believe in ufo's and scientology). Currently the set of transmission lines being discussed for the tehachapi thing are not energized(here in chino hills, ontario, diamond bar etc), and have not been since 1974. They would be replaced with higher power lines and taller towers and then energized. Both of which the residents are opposed to. By law next year (?), a certain percent of power here in So Cal must be from renewable sources such as solar, wind, bovine flatulence whatever. I am not sure if Fresno is near Tehachapi or not. But I'm in So Cal and some of the energy might just power this laptop. I just hope they don't ship BPL (broadband over power-lines) over it, if anyone knows what I'm talking about, it is the bane of amateur radio operators (hams) that use the radio spectrum for worldwide comms. BPL makes the power lines an access point to the web, but it creates terrible hum and static to the receivers of ham operators. 73
