Pretty cool!

But is it economically as inexpensive as other forms of power? Or is the technology projected to become less costly?

Thats Massive size project.

I wonder how much CO2 was put into the atmosphere to build this massive thing.

There's an awful lot of the rest of that valley that could be used similarly! Nice to see oil being used in a renewable way :)

You could easily generate 25 times more energy by replacing this thing with a nuclear power plant. Heavy isotopes of Uranium are known to be renewable in star explosions.

"You could easily generate 25 times more energy by replacing this thing with a nuclear power plant."

And in infinite amount more nuclear waste! :)

the thought behind this is great but 300 acres is a bit much...ITS A WASTE OF LAND RESOURCES. i hope the cost ratio is worth it.

what they should do is with new housing developments and solar paneling portions of their rooves to create a system to buy bacK the excess energy

This will only run during daylight hours so it can't help light houses at night. Other supplemental (fossil/nuclear/wind/hydro/biomass) will be needed to provide 24/7 power. 10 of these (5 sq miles) would supply the same (daylight) power of one medium sized nuclear, oil or coal plant. I suppose it is worth a try to see how it goes, but it is no long term solution to electric power.

"I wonder how much CO2 was put into the atmosphere to build this massive thing."

Is that an honest question or a dumb attack?

If it's an honest question, the answer is I don't know, but it certainly is not a fixed factor. Solar panel factories and many of the processes around them will eventually run on clean energy.

If it's a dumb attack, come on! Everything uses energy - roads, malls, houses, coal plants - the difference is that this solar power plant, after the capital investment, will actually reduce our CO2 emissions and other forms of pollutions for decades with almost not maintenance and zero fuel costs. The only thing better is saving energy through efficiency and conservation.

Nevada Solar One @ Google Earth/Maps

That's not a solar-cell array, it's a solar-thermal array so it's built primarily from steel, glass and aluminium. All three materials are highly recyclable and the carbon cost of gaining usable material is relatively low. Especially when compared to the energy required to extract, refine and enrich uranium.

"You could easily generate 25 times more energy by replacing this thing with a nuclear power plant."

at perhaps 25 (or more) times the cost. ask yourself, when was the last nuclear power plant built in the united states...? then ask why.

Yeah, nuclaer power plants cost quite a bit.. And even more than you think when you look at the real costs such as various subsidies (including insurance, and probably subsidies and land sold under cost wrt mining).

I'm all for new techs like Thorium that are proliferation-proof (afaik), but uranium and plutonium are probably not good ideas..

"the thought behind this is great but 300 acres is a bit much...ITS A WASTE OF LAND RESOURCES. i hope the cost ratio is worth it... ...new housing developments"

Look at the picture. Do you see water? Do you see anything growing there? I am sure plenty of small organisms live in that valley, but virtually ANY other human activity would need WATER to be PIPED in. From somewhere nearby, presumably also relativity DRY!

I will assume that you are not a complete moron, and therefore not proposing the building of houses in the same place as the solar farm, but rather somewhere people want to live. Sure, sounds fine. But do the projects need to be mutually exclusive?

As for nuclear power, it has its own problems. Uranium has to be mined out of the ground. It will also run out (acessable deposits). You also have to dump the waste somewhere.

I stopped by in November 2006. It's a few hours south of vegas off the 95. There's literally no one living out there, and it's certainly not a place for a housing development. Here's a photo I took of the mirrors: http://23b.org/gallery/k_londo_wedding/IMG_7322 and View from the highway.

" Heavy isotopes of Uranium are known to be renewable in star explosions."

At some distance from us. Who is going to build the wormhole to go and get it? Also, stars are formed from hydrogen which collapses in from large clouds. Eventually star formation will slow as lighter elements are used up. You will need a new big bang, the creation of which will require burning lots of fossil fuels, I reckon.

- This will only run during daylight hours so it can't help light houses at night. -

Ever heard of batteries?

OK, granted it can only receive solar radiation during daylight hours but the downtime is minimal because of heat retention systems built in.

In fact, I bet that if they are clever it could well operate 24/7.

"This will only run during daylight hours". Not so, according to the Wikipedia article. The plan to store some of the heat by phase-changing salts during the day and retrieve it at night to maintain the power output. That is one of the advantages of thermal, as opposed to photoelectric, thermal power.

And if you flay over Nevada, you see an awful lot of land which is never going to be farmed or built on. There simply is not enough water for any use by water-based life. 300 acres out ot this area is a flyspeck.

the question how much carbon was used to creat this thing is not an inane question. It is a question we should be asking for every project, before we build.
If the carbon used to create a facility exceeds the carbon that will be saved by the power it produces over a lifetime, the design may need to be rethought.
Glass and aluminum are both moderately high energy investment items.
Now there is a valid counter point that at some time these units may be made entirely with clean energy. When that is the case, we still have to be sure taht the energy produced greatly exceeds the energy condumed. That is renewable energy economics.

Because I have lived 28 years in a solar heated house, and took count of the cost to build it, I anticipate that this thing could be moderately economical. A similar concept was used in the soviet union to melt scrap steel. Again it did not allow work 365 days and nights per year, but the molten steel was used to preheat the next batch so giving heat a second life.

Land usage does look excessive if we are thinking of an urban setting. But mirrors set up to shade a large parking lot and heat a pipe standing off at one end of the parking lot could give energy with no loss of parking space, less oppressive heat in it.