Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Picture of the Day - Primm Valley Solar Tower

Driving on I-15 in recent days to and fro between Paso Robles, CA, and Sandy, UT, it was hard not to notice how far along the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility at Primm Valley has gotten with its three dramatic-looking heliostat receiving towers thrusting up above the floor of the Mojave Desert just southwest of Las Vegas, NV. These solar power towers just inside the California state line look more like NASA rocket pads than heliostat receiving towers. Surrounding all three of these towers is a growing field of heliostat panels aimed at these towers. We have heard a lot about "alternative energy sources" in the public discourse in recent years and this is a wonderful example of such being built right before our eyes.

Note: At bottom is a National Geographic short video about this project that I have added on August 30, 2013.

UPATE as of February 14, 2014, from the The Weather Channel HERE

One of three heliostat receiving towers under construction in the Primm Valley area.
UPDATE:  Here are two more images I captured of this facility today, September 24, 2012, as I drove past it nearly six months after I captured the image above.

All three heliostat receiving towers shown here.
All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved).

12 comments:

  1. Very close to where the Baker-to-Vegas foot relay race is run. Stopped by to investigate. Very impressive and it appears to be in the right location.

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  2. Dear Anonymous #1,

    I plan to be back through there in a couple of weeks (middle of June 2012) and snap an updated image and post it on this blog with a link-thru on this page.

    Kimmer

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  3. Too bad this 30-year-old technology wasn't developed 40 years ago. It is hard to believe that this is less expensive than amorphous thin-film solar panels. Every mirror needs a 2-axis tracking motor. It makes steam to power turbines, even older technology. When the majority of power is needed after the sun goes down it produces nothing. Solar energy is a dead end, the kind of "alternate energy" Big Oil has permitted, whereas real Free Energy, coming soon from extraterrestrial sources, will make this nonsense seem quite silly. Likewise, this is more centralized Big Company energy that has to be distributed over wires. Not impressive to this observer, sorry to say.

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  4. Zuvrick. Lighten up.

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  6. LEDs are categorized in different types like miniature, mid range and high power according to their different sizes present in the market. These LEDs are considered to be the best source of light emission as these have a low wear and tear as compared to the other light emitting sources present in the market. LEDs when developed by Holonyak were developed to provide a simple and inexpensive way for computers to convey the information and then it was used in the portable calculators but now these LEDs are used from the coffee making machines to the 290 ft tall Reuters billboard in Times Square. Today these LEDs provide us an unmatched high quality and experience of TV watching by the LED televisions that are available in the market.
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  7. Zuvrick represents the "Coast-To-Coast Am" crowd that is always talking about some impending announcement or development as it pertains to UFO's etc. which never come but they hope we all forget all their previous false pronouncements and facilitate that end by way of yet newer breathless prognostications of impending NASA announcements of such. As the old saying goes, you can fool some of the people all the time and all people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time.

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  8. I ALWAYS WONDERED WHAT THESE SCI-FI LOOKING TOWERS WERE, I PASS THEM MONTHLY AS , I TRAVEL BETWEEN LAS VEGAS AND LOS ANGELES......THANKS FOR THE INFO !.......INTERESTING.

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  9. I seen it!
    It was Glowing a bright white light.

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  11. These panels are merely reflectors which direct solar radiation at the main towers at the center of each of the three arrays... different system entirely from what you are discussing. Heliostat panels versus photovoltaic cell panels.

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  12. I really like the information provided in this article. And I am happy to read like this thanks.

    ReplyDelete