400 Megawatt Solar Plant Okayed In California

http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2007/11/californias-fir.html

"The expensive, year-long process of assembling hundreds of pages of documents detailing the proposed 400-megawatt power plant and its environmental impact had passed bureaucratic muster. Now the Commission begins a 12-month process to review and license the project. If all goes well, ground could be broken in early 2009 on on BrightSource’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, to be built in the Mojave Desert just across from the Nevada border in San Bernardino County. (BrightSource’s artist rendering above.)

BrightSource is currently negotiating a 500-megawatt power purchase agreement with California utility PG&E (PCG), and Woolard says the company is in talks with other utilities to supply another 1,000 megawatts from seven power plants. BrightSource has applied to lease a site from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for a second solar power plant, a 500-megawatt project to be built near Broadwell Dry Lake in the Mojave. The company has relied on venture capital for funding but Woolard revealed Wednesday that the company has also secured investment from Morgan Stanley (MS)."

.....

"BrightSource has developed a new solar technology, dubbed distributed power tower, that focuses fields of sun-tracking mirrors called heliostats on a tower containing a water-filled boiler. The sun’s rays superheat the water and the resulting steam drives an elecricity-generating turbine."

And NIMBY assholes like Ted Kennedy need to GTFO