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Solar powered Spain
photo by afloresm (source: Flickr Creative Commons)
Solar power is a hot project in sunny Spain. Outside of Seville you’ll find the world’s first commercial solar tower, which appears like a modernist church spire surrounded by an adoring flock of robotic minions. The minions are in fact mirrors – or heliostats – which reflect sunlight onto a receiver located at the top of the monolithic tower.
A CNN article explores the PS 10 and forthcoming PS 20 solar power tower projects in Spain:
Each heliostat measures 120 square meters, which gives the entire heliostat field an area of 75,000 square meters. On a sunny day this can produce up to 11 megawatts of energy, enough to power a town of 6,000 homes, such as the neighboring community of Sanlucar la Mayor.
CNN’s ‘Earth’s Frontiers’ program – embedded below – delves deeper into the state of solar power in Spain and touches on Britain’s recent solar power initiatives. The CNN report is quite positive about solar power in the UK, as opposed to the Guardian’s George Monbiot’s recent railings against the UK government’s ‘feed-in tariffs’ scheme involving photovoltaic solar panels.
CNN Earth’s Frontiers – Spain’s solar revolution
by Graham Land
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