Hello all.
I am going to rant a bit here. Everytime I would drive through an empty desert I would wish that SOMEONE would put up a solar farm. Well looks like SOMEONE finally got the same idea myself and many other have had. USE THE SOUTHWEST FOR SOLAR ENERGY!! We could power the country off the sun from the deserts in the southwest. Oh and they have discovered a new coral reef. There is more news on my blog.
FINALLY SOMEONE IN THE US USES THEIR BRAINS ABOUT SOLAR!! I HAVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR FRICKING DECADES!!!
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - BrightSource Energy Inc, a private solar energy company, said on Thursday it filed for a construction permit from the California Energy Commission to build a 400-megawatt solar power plant in the Mojave Desert.
The project would cover between 3,000 and 3,500 acres near the Nevada border about 40 miles southeast of Las Vegas and use solar thermal technology to generate electricity at two 100 MW plants and one 200 MW plant.
The planned technology will use thousands of small mirrors to reflect sunlight on boilers atop 300-foot-tall towers, said Charles Ricker, a senior vice president at BrightSource. The sunlight would heat water to produce steam to run turbines. BLM already has received right-of-way requests on more than 300,000 acres of California desert for development of about 34 large solar plants totaling 24,000 MW.That would be about half of the electricity consumed in California on a hot summer day.
BrightSource has responded to power purchase solicitations by three California utilities -- PG&E Corp's Pacific Gas & Electric unit, Edison International's EIX.N Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric, a unit of Sempra Energy SRE.N.Ricker said the project would be built in three stages, with 2010 the target for the first plant. Development costs were not disclosed.
Huge new reef
Scientists in Australia have stumbled on an uncharted coral reef the size of Jersey in Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria. At 120 sq km, it covers a larger area than all the reefs of Barbados put together.
"We were absolutely stunned when we lowered a video camera down there and saw living hard corals," said Peter Harris, who led the Geoscience Australia expedition. "We had thought it was just a relic from lower sea levels."
The reef has probably escaped notice until now because most of it is more than 20m below the surface and because of its remoteness. The nearest big settlement is the town of Karumba 250km to the south-east.
There's so much in the ocean that we have yet to see or discover. I wish we spent more money and time looking into the ocean then into space. On that note I will leave you with these pictures and wish you a wonderful day.