astronomy

Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert

Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert rather than just read about it. In short: There are several solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which supply power to the electricity grid. Insolation (solar radiation) in the Mojave Desert is among the best available in the United States, and some significant population centers are located in the area.

Key takeaways

Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

There are several solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which supply power to the electricity grid. Insolation (solar radiation) in the Mojave Desert is among the best available in the United States, and some significant population centers are located in the area. These plants can generally be built in a few years because solar plants are built almost entirely with modular, readily available materials. Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) is the name given to nine solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which were built in the 1980s, the first commercial solar plant. These plants have a combined capacity of 354 megawatts (MW) which made them the largest solar power installation in the world, until Ivanpah Solar Power Facility was finished in 2014. Nevada Solar One is a solar thermal plant with a 64 MW generating capacity, located near Boulder City, Nevada. The Copper Mountain Solar Facility is a 150 MW photovoltaic power plant in Boulder City, Nevada. The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility is a 370 MW facility which consists of three separate solar thermal power plants just off interstate highway 15 on the Nevada-California border in the Mojave Desert. There are also plans to build other large solar plants in the Mojave Desert.

Overview

The Southwestern United States is one of the world's best areas for insolation, and the Mojave Desert receives up to twice the sunlight received in other regions of the country. This abundance of solar energy makes solar power plants a cleaner alternative to traditional power plants, which burn fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Solar power stations provide an environmentally benign source of energy, produce virtually no emissions, and consume no fuel other than sunlight. Some groups are also encouraging more distributed generation, or rooftop solar. In 2008, solar electricity was not cost competitive with bulk, baseload power. However, it does provide electricity when and where power is most limited and most expensive, which is a strategic contribution. Solar electricity mitigates the risk of fuel-price volatility and improves grid reliability. Since then costs have decreased to make solar electricity increasingly competitive. While many of the costs of fossil fuels are well known, others (pollution related health problems, environmental degradation, the impact on national security from relying on foreign energy sources) are indirect and difficult to calculate. These are traditionally external to the pricing system, and are thus often referred to as externalities. A corrective pricing mechanism, such as a carbon tax, could lead to renewable energy, such as solar thermal power, becoming cheaper to the consumer than fossil fuel based energy. Solar thermal power plants can generally be built in a few years because solar plants are built almost entirely with modular, readily available materials. In contrast, many types of conventional power projects, especially coal and nuclear plants, require long lead times.

Solar plants

Solar One and Solar Two

Solar power towers use thousands of individual sun-tracking mirrors (called heliostats) to reflect solar energy onto a central receiver located on top of a tall tower. The receiver collects the sun's heat in a heat-transfer fluid that flows through the receiver. The U.S. Department of Energy, with a consortium of utilities and industry, built the first two large-scale, demonstration solar power towers in the desert near Barstow, California. Solar One operated successfully from 1982 to 1988, proving that solar power towers work efficiently to produce utility-scale power from sunlight. The Solar One plant used water/steam as the heat-transfer fluid in the receiver; this presented several problems in terms of storage and continuous turbine operation. To address these problems, Solar One was upgraded to Solar Two, which operated from 1996 to 1999. Both systems had a 10 MW power capacity. The unique feature of Solar Two was its use of molten salt to capture and store the sun's heat. The very hot salt was stored and used when needed to produce steam to drive a turbine/generator that produces electricity. The system operated smoothly through intermittent clouds and continued generating electricity long into the night. Solar Two was decommissioned in 1999, and was converted by the University of California, Davis, into CACTUS, an Air Cherenkov Telescope, in 2001, measuring gamma rays hitting the atmosphere.

Solar Energy Generating Systems

Trough systems predominate among today's commercial solar power plants. Nine separate trough power plants, called Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS), were built in the 1980s in the Mojave Desert near Barstow by the Israeli company BrightSource Energy (formerly Luz Industries). These plants have a combined capacity of 354 MW. NextEra says that the solar plants power 232,500 homes (during the day, at peak power) and displace 3,800 tons of pollution per year that would have been produced if the electricity had been provided by fossil fuels, such as oil. Trough systems convert the heat from the sun into electricity. Because of their parabolic shape, trough collectors can focus the sun at 30-60 times its normal intensity on a receiver pipe located along the focal line of the trough. Synthetic oil circulates through the pipe and captures this heat, reaching temperatures of 390 °C (735 °F). The hot oil is pumped to a generating station and routed through a heat exchanger to produce steam. Finally, electricity is produced in a conventional steam turbine. The SEGS plants operate on natural gas on cloudy days or after dark, and natural gas provides 25% of the total output. Critics note that this reliance on gas-fired power for "backup" electricity has, over the 35-year history of the plants, generated over 3 million tons of CO2 emissions more than if the electricity had been generated by a nuclear plant.

Desert Sunlight Solar Farm The Desert Sunlight Solar Farm is a 550 megawatt (MWAC) photovoltaic power station approximately six miles north of Desert Center, California, in the Mojave Desert. It uses approximately 8.8 million cadmium telluride modules made by the US thin-film manufacturer First Solar. As of Fall 2015, the Solar Farm has the same 550 MW installed capacity as the Topaz Solar Farm in the Carrizo Plain region of Central California, making both of them tied for the second largest completed solar plants by installed capacity.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert

In research: Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1982 establishments in the United States, Mojave Desert, Renewable energy commercialization, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert in simple terms?

Why does Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Solar power plants in the Mojave Desert.