Envisioning Gateway Competition

Winners of the Van Alen Institute's Envisioning Gateway competition to be announced Monday... more on this later perhaps (there should be some exciting entries, if previous VAI competitions provide any indication).

Heliostats and Turbines

Meant to put a note up about this earlier...

[image: flickr user G.Muleey]

The new solar-thermal power plant outside Seville (Spain). The 377-foot tall (aprox. 40-stories) tower receives the sun's reflected light via 600 networked heliostats, which train enough light onto the tower to convert enough water into steam to power enough turbines to generate 11 megawatts of electricity -- not a terribly impressive amount at the moment, though it is enough to power 6000 homes. However, the plant is eventually expected to generate enough power to provide the electricity demanded by the entire city of Seville (quite a bit of power). Oh, and isn't it gorgeous?

[image: bbc]

Read more at the BBC; link via FreeSoil.