Canada to Build 40MW Solar Power Plant

IceDiver writes "According to an article in the Toronto Star, an Ontario company has been given approval to build a 40MW solar power plant near Sarnia in Southwestern Ontario. This is enough power for about 10,000 homes. The plant will cover 365 hectares (1.4 sq. miles) and is to be operational by 2010. OptiSolar, the company building the plant, claims to have developed a way to mass produce the solar panels at a dramatically reduced cost, making the plant competitive with other forms of power generation. 'Compared to coal, nuclear power, even wind, solar's squeaky-clean image comes at a high price. OptiSolar is selling the electricity to the province under its new standard offer program, which pays a premium for electricity that comes from small-scale renewable projects. In the case of wind, it's 11 cents per kilowatt-hour. Solar fetches 42 cents per kilowatt hour, nearly four times as much.'"

and coal?

[by Anonymous Coward]

6 cents.

or evertything else...

[C10H14N2 (640033)]

If I converted to this, it would ramp my annual bill from $480 to $3200. Since we haven't had a significant nuclear accident since the Carter administration, which even then affected roughly NO ONE, I'll stick with my current supplier, thanks.

Re:or evertything else...

[Yaztromo (655250)]

If I converted to this, it would ramp my annual bill from $480 to $3200.

No misunderstand the program. It isn't end-consumers who pay the $0.42/KWh, its the Province of Ontario, through the Ontario Power Authority. It simple gets pumped into the grid, and the consumers continue to pay the standard rate. The contract with the Province is good for 20 years.

The idea is to spur development of renewable energy sources, while fossil fuel based plants are taken offline. It's a pretty sweet deal for the microgenerators (the program is only open to projects that generate a maximum of 10MW at a voltage of 50kV or less).

Note that during peak periods, an extra 3.52/KWh is paid out, and the contract is indexed to inflation. And anyone in Ontario can apply to have their renewable resource microgenerator included in the program simply by filling out an online form.

IMO, this is an excellent program. Ontario has been rebuilding nuclear capacity, has a lot of hydroelectric generation, and has been taking fossil fuel based plants offline (slowly). My family has some holiday property in central Ontario that goes unused for much of the year, and I've long thought that we should invest in some solar panels and a small wind turbine hooked into the power grid to generate some revenue. A program like this could very well make it worth it in the long run. Every such project, no matter how small, is that much less reliance needed on a fossil fuel-based plant somewhere.

Yaz.

Re:or everything else...

[Yaztromo (655250)]

Oops -- I forgot the URL to the programs website, for the interested:

http://www.powerauthority.on.ca/sop/ [powerauthority.on.ca]

Yaz.

Re:or evertything else...

[drsquare (530038)]

No misunderstand the program. It isn't end-consumers who pay the $0.42/KWh, its the Province of Ontario

Paid for by the tax-payers. So frugal users who keep their electricity usage down are subsidising the bills of wasteful people who leave all their lights on 24/7.

A better way to encourage renewable energy sources would be a tax on electricity based on its environmental damage. If would make renewable energy more viable and force people into using less electricity. But this wouldn't involve as many opportunities for back-handers.

Re:

[Yaztromo (655250)]

like every greenie i've ever met, your lack of understanding of even basic economics is woeful. where the hell do you think the province gets it's money from dim wit??? CONSUMERS/TAX PAYERS. and last i heard, the production of the solar panels is more toxic then just burning the same amount of coal. i hate this kind of feel good crap. do something REAL for the environment, not this fake shit.

I'm not a "greenie". I can, however, use proper capitalization, grammar, and spelling.

You have to realize that

Re:

[Firethorn (177587)]

Where do you think the capital construction costs for new and/or retrofitted plants is going to come from? Those exact same taxpayers.

I'd tend to think that the taxpayers would rather pay to replace the plants with cheaper and more effective alternatives. For example, while this has a construction cost of $8 watt, with a power factor* likely between 30-40%

*Basically what percentage of the plant's rated capacity it actually averages. A 40MW plant with a power factor of 40% would actually average 16MW. A 1

Re:

[SnapShot (171582)]

Just curious. What's the lifetime storage and/or handling costs of the waste?

These comparisons of various power generation techniques -- coal, gas, nuclear, solar, wind -- do a good job of comparing current operating cost and construction costs but generally seem to ignore the lifetime costs.

Is coal still a good economic decision if you figure in the cost to restore the open pit mine, remove the carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxides from the air, and remove the silt and pollution from the local streams and r

Re:

[Dun Malg (230075)]

Just curious. What's the lifetime storage and/or handling costs of the waste?

If they'd simply allow the construction of breeder reactors to reprocess the waste into more fuel, the waste problem with nuclear virtually vanishes. You are then left with only the power plant itself. A decommissioned plant can be dismantled and clean in far less time than it takes to fix an open-pit mine.

Re:

[Andy Dodd (701)]

It's slightly more complicated than this - I believe only certain types of breeders can basically guarantee only short-lived waste (fundamentally by being able to "burn" basically any actinide), and those breeder types were still in the research phase in the early 1990s.

That said, the fact that research was 100% halted in the early 1990s by the Clinton administration on one of the most promising of these breeder types (the IFR) due to proliferation concerns (showing a fundamental lack of understanding of th

Re:or evertything else...

[Yaztromo (655250)]

Glad to hear that the Province of Ontario no longer has ANY taxation of its citizens! Wonderful news - I'll move there immediately!

Oh wait, they still have to tax the population to pay for things like health, education, roads, power subsidies?

Somewhere this solar power plant is getting its $0.42/kWh, and if it's coming from the government, it's coming from your taxes. Essentially your tax dollars are funding this private company - you're paying $0.42/kWh minimum, whether it shows on your power bill or not.

A few points:

• As you said, taxation pays for health care in Ontario. Not all that far from the area in question is the Nanticoke Power Plant -- the largest coal fired power plant in North America. Pollution from fossil fuel fired power plants causes thousands of deaths in Canada per year, primarily of the elderly, who have to be hospitalized for lengthy periods of time due to respiratory problems. Pollution from fossil-fuel plants is already costing taxpayers. Reducing pollution will (in time) net a tax savings for taxpayers.
• Most of the large scale power plants in Ontario are ageing, and will be in need of replacement in the next 20 years. The Government has stated its intentions to close Nanticoke by 2009. If new generation capacity is going to be built anyhow, who do you think is going to pay for it anyhow? That's right -- taxpayers.
• Projects like this one will create jobs, which is a net increase for the Province when it comes to overall tax collections.
• As seen in the blackout of August 2003 [wikipedia.org] (and I was living in Ontario at the time, and remember it quite well), Ontario's electricity grid and system of lots of large, distant power plants makes failure really easy. One of the potential solutions to mitigate the effects from such things occurring again is to have a lot more regional microgeneration plants. Encouraging the creation of such facilities can lessen the effect on the economy and the lives of citizens if such an event happens again.

FWIW, I haven't lived in Ontario for a few years. I have family that still does, however. IMO, this seems like a pretty good investment on the part of the Province and on the part of taxpayers -- taxpayers get clean burning energy, pollution-related health care costs decrease, jobs are created, and with a bit of luck and ingenuity green power related industries move to Ontario due to its expended market. Sounds like a pretty good deal to the citizens of Ontario to me.

Investments cost money. Governments have been investing in fossil fuel based power plants for decades, through either direct ownership or subsidies. Hell, chances are very good that the power in whatever region you're living in is or has been subsidized by tax dollars. Why start bitching about it just because in this case it's a green technology subsidy

Yaz.

Re:or evertything else...

[Firethorn (177587)]

Nanticoke Power Plant is a 3.92GW plant with what appears to be a 70% load factor.

In other words, even a hundred of these plants, with a combined cost of $30 billion dollars, wouldn't be able to replace Nanticoke. Meanwhile 4 Gigawatt nuclear reactors would cost ~4-8 Billion dollars and eliminate the need for nanticoke, complete with around a 30% increase in available power.

Projects like this one will create jobs, which is a net increase for the Province when it comes to overall tax collections.

Projects like this make sense if they increase economic activity, but building any kind of new power plant would do the same, and cheap power would help attract more new business than expensive power. Being miserly is the best way to increase business in many ways - providing the most services for the dollar.

I agree with you on the idea of eliminating pollution, just on the how.

Why start bitching about it just because in this case it's a green technology subsidy

Because it costs around 8 times as much as other clean technology? And people complain about Haliburton*.

*Not because I like fraud, but I also dislike waste. Rather than using this to 'spur' development, they'd be better off investing half directly into solar development and the other half building a few new nuclear reactors.

Re:

[Dun Malg (230075)]

Projects like this one will create jobs, which is a net increase for the Province when it comes to overall tax collections.

I'm rather ambivalent on the issue itself, but I would like to point out that the above line of reasoning is a variation of the Broken Window Fallacy [wikipedia.org] .

Re:

[Dasher42 (514179)]

Like most things related to Big Oil and big car companies, you're being presented with an up-front cost for the renewable energy, and the subsidized costs you've paid for through your tax dollars. Our petroleum based economy is actually very costly, and it doesn't come down to dollars, but who wants to keep their hands on the tap.

This is good news. This is a sane source of electricity that will help solar power gain the momentum for an economy of scale.

Re:

[tylernt (581794)]

The main problem with nuclear energy is not the accidents, but the storage of the waste material, which remains extremely poisonous for a very long time. Maybe you didn't know that.

Only because of legislation. We could actually recycle and re-use the waste (as France is doing) if the politicians would just allow it. That, combined with new pebble-bed reactors that are virtually meltdown-proof, make nuclear pretty attractive.

Shame

[mrshowtime (562809)]

I was shopping for home improvement stuff today and I put my hand on a 8x3 huge sheet of granite and was amazed at how much energy and heat was in that relatively thin piece. It got me to thinking why there has never been a real push for solar energy technology. Yes, in the past it has been cost prohibitive, but I guess I am asking why there has never been a "nuclear" level push behind solar tech and why isn't there a real push now that we have the technology available? I mean, come on, it's free, endless* energy! :)

Re:Shame

[zippthorne (748122)]

Footprint.

Cheap, efficient, easily maintianable solar is not hard at all. All you need is mirrors, some slow electric motors, a working fluid, and a conventional turbine. Oh, and a lot of land not near NIMBYs, who for some reason will find a reason to be scared of everything.

Biggest Shame: Emotion Trumps Science

[reporter (666905)]

Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown University conducted an extensive study of the cost of nuclear power generation via current and future nuclear technologies [sciencedaily.com]. The conclusion is that the cost of nuclear power falls in the range: "3 cents per kilowatt hour to nearly 14 cents per kilowatt hour". That cost is much lower than the solar-cell power plant and, on average, is cheaper than wind power. Nuclear power is almost as "clean" as wind power.

Building a solar-panel power station is "cool", "neat", and "oh, so hip". However, it makes no economic sense. Solar power is about 3x the cost of the most expensive nuclear power.

Nuclear power is the way to go.

Re:Biggest Shame: Emotion Trumps Science

[mgv (198488)]

Building a solar-panel power station is "cool", "neat", and "oh, so hip". However, it makes no economic sense. Solar power is about 3x the cost of the most expensive nuclear power.

Nuclear power is the way to go.

Ok, its not quite as simple as that.

Nuclear power by standard technology requires enrichment. Thats because they require a much higher percentage of U235 [wikipedia.org] in order to sustain a reaction than occurs naturally.

U235 is only 0.7% of uranium (as it has a half life about one tenth of U238 [wikipedia.org]). You need 4% or more to do a conventional nuclear reactor.

Enrichment also means throwing away a lot of U238, which will never be used in a conventional reactor.

Now we can use U238 in a breeder reactor [wikipedia.org] (and Thorium, which converts to U233). But if you do that, its a whole different technology, and the costs [wikipedia.org] aren't as clear cut.

If you were to try and run the world on conventional reactors, the supply of uranium would last us 20 years or so. If you can use breeders, you will get maybe a 100 years (depends how much we use). If you add in thorium, several hundred years.

So the only price that is relevant is the breeder reactor price of electricity. Because there isn't enough U235 in the world to really get serious about using it this way.

Breeder reactor technology is real, we can do it. Its a bit more expensive, but will no doubt get cheaper with use. Guess what? So will solar power.

And, at the risk of being doom and gloom, guess which one will still be plentiful in the year 3000? There is a finite amount of fissile material on the planet. The sun should be good for about 500 million years or so, as opposed to 500 years.

I know that there are energy storage issues for baseload, but there are solutions such as solar towers [wikipedia.org]. And open battery [wikipedia.org] storage.

I'm not opposed to nuclear power, but in the longer run, its also a stop gap for solar energy (including wind & hydro as being solar in origin), geothermal and tidal energy. So that is where we need to spend the big dollars.

My 2c worth.

Michael

Re:Biggest Shame: Emotion Trumps Science

[kilodelta (843627)]

The problem I have with nuclear power is that it is woefully inefficient. Using nuclear fission to generate steam that drives a turbine to produce electricity seems wasteful to me.

As our understanding of the physical world increases, it should be possible to extract electrons directly from the items undergoing fission. Then I'd consider it efficient use.

Re:

[pclminion (145572)]

As our understanding of the physical world increases, it should be possible to extract electrons directly from the items undergoing fission.

I am astonished by the number of physical misunderstandings you must have that would cause you to write such a sentence.

Re:

[TuballoyThunder (534063)]

> If you were to try and run the world on conventional reactors, the supply of uranium would last us 20 years or so.
> If you can use breeders, you will get maybe a 100 years (depends how much we use). If you add in thorium, several
> hundred years.

Twenty years--lets look at that the number carefully. The current mineral inventory of uranium, coupled with current enrichment technology and usage gives you about 70 years [world-nuclear.org]. If one projects that number of reactors triples, then we can get the twent

Re:

[Waffle Iron (339739)]

Due to nonproliferation concerns, substantial increase in worldwide nuclear power use is a non-starter. It just isn't going to happen, so give it up and focus on alternative technologies. The hippies and environmentalists aren't driving this, the neocons are. If nuclear power were a viable option, we wouldn't be going batshit over Iran and its little nuclear industry. Now imagine every other country on earth demanding to control their own nuclear infrastructure: This isn't ever going be allowed to happen.

Ratio's

[Kawahee (901497)]

"to power 10,000 homes ... the plant will cover 365 hectares"

It appears the footprint per house of the solar panels is actually less than the footprint of a house by itself. Surely it should be mandatory/make sense for compulsary solar panelling on houses?

Re:

[simcop2387 (703011)]

assuming its just solar panelling, i'd think it'd be a good idea. but if its anything fancier (like the mirrors pointed at a tower to boil water) then it might not scale to that size very well.

Re:Ratio's

[Firethorn (177587)]

Are you sure about that? [google.com]

365 hecters = 39.3 million square feet. The average [census.gov] size of new homes are ~2.4k square feet each, or 24 million square feet total. This doesn't count roof space though, as a two story house will have half the roof expected.

It's close, but not a match.

Hmm... 40MW over 10k homes only leaves 4kw average draw per house, or 16 amps of 240 during the day. Figure a 50% load factor(High end), that's 1,440 kw/h per house. At my local price of $.08/kwh $115.20 of electricity. I saw that Canada's subsidizing solar to the tune of $.24/kwh, so it'd end up being $345.60 of electricity.

This is considered good how?

Re:

[Firethorn (177587)]

I saw that Canada's subsidizing solar to the tune of $.24/kwh, so it'd end up being $345.60 of electricity.

Excuse, me, I'm dyslexic apparently. $.42/kwh = $604.80

Are they insane?

$70-80 million for a 10mw install, this one is expected to run $300 millon.
$80 million for 10mw = $8 a watt, in Canada I'd expect availability to limit the production factor to, at most, 40%

Let's beat the nuclear drum a bit.
Nuclear power = $1-2/watt, for a production factor that's above 80% today.

For around four times what they're

In pursuit of the almighty buck, coal would win

[Firethorn (177587)]

Well I'd say that they think getting cleaner energy is worth the price difference.

If I was solely in pursuit of the 'almighty buck' I'd have suggested coal. Coal, with minimal pollution controls would probably run $.25/watt capacity. Fuel costs would be higher, of course. With newest generation pollution control technology costs increase to the point that a minor rise in coal costs would make nuclear cheaper even in the short run.

I'd say that the difference between nuclear and solar isn't enough to justi

Only for a very few homes, though.

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

It's not really "cleaner," because it's not producing nearly as much power as the nuclear plant would.

The nuclear plant could give far, far many more homes carbon-neutral power -- the wind plant is going to give it to just a few, while the rest are still going to be stuck on highly polluting fossil fuel generation. When you factor all that fossil fuel into the "solar" column, which you need to, in order to produce the same amount of power from a finite investment in plants, it's not very clean at all.

It's n

Re:Only for a very few homes, though.

[Firethorn (177587)]

I just have to say that I agree with you. That's one of the points I've tried to make: There are limits to funding, economies, etc... While the supply is not fixed, there are processes that are more efficient than others.

A 40MW plant of solar is unlikely to enable the takedown of even a single coal plant. Even ten of them is unlikely to. Ten of these solar plants would cost $3Billion dollars, which, depending upon which figures you use, would result in 1-3GW of new nuclear plant capacity, which would enable the shutting down of a number of coal plants.

Is it just me, or does it appear that somebody's being awfully free with the troll mod on anybody being down on solar power, or this install of it?

Re:Ratio's

[smallfries (601545)]

Yesterday there was an article [independent.co.uk] in the Independent about a large wave powered station off the coast of Cornwall. The thing that struck me as odd is that in the UK the 20MW station will supply about 7500 "homes" - always a strange piece of statistics. In Canada the 40MW solar station will supply about 10000. Is this purely down to different levels of power consumption on either side of the Atlantic, or is the exchange rate for Canadian Watts pretty bad?

Was it snowing in Cornwall 2 weeks ago?

[MochaMan (30021)]

When people start dying from exposure walking from their driveway to their front door in Cornwall, I would expect power consumption to start going up.

I'm not impressed

[syncrotic (828809)]

Photovoltaic is an appropriate technology for the private rooftops of wealthy environmentally-minded people. They don't mind a 20 year ROI, because they're installing the panels to feel good about making a difference. I, as a consumer of electricity, do not want to pay $0.42/kWh: that's probably one of the most expensive electricity sources in north america.

I especially don't want to pay those rates for a dead-end technology. It's one thing to build a pilot plant at subsidized rates if it can realistically

Re:

[dino213b (949816)]

Historically, in the US, projects that succeed have to be subsidized by the federal government. A prime example of big projects in the US that are "perceived as successful" are dams. Private construction of dams has failed time and time again (due to massive costs) until bureau of reclamation and USACE started siphoning from the federal budget for their construction. If you examine costs vs benefits on most dams in the US, you will see that a large number of them are "useless". Funding of these puppies has

40MW is not that much

[Burdell (228580)]

The nearby nuclear power plant here has three reactors, each of which can generate over 1100MW (one reactor is currently off-line but is on schedule to be on-line next month, now capable of up to 1280MW). Even closer to my house is the dam that can generate over 140MW.

Is it possible to use only renewable sources?

[tsa (15680)]

The question that has been bugging me for a long time is: Is it even possible for us to use only renewable energy sources? I'm almost convinced we will never get enough energy out of renewable sources. Even now there are stories in the newspapers about locals having not enough food and water because their resources are being used for the production of alcohol for car fuel. Only a tiny amount of the earth's car poulation uses alcohol as (constituent of) its fuel. What if every car on earth has to run on bio

Re:

[Xiph (723935)]

Still, the rooftops do represent a resource, that we can use.
So it won't give us 100% coverage? well, even if all roofs covered in solar panals only covered 10% of our needs, it's still better than those 10% being covered by coal plants.

Yes, we do have to make more energy-efficient appliances and sadly yes, we do face big problems in the future.
The problems we face might be solvable by nuclear power, but we also know that this has long term problems we don't want,
I think it's best to at least get as much as

Photovoltaic vs. SEGS

[sarahbau (692647)]

Why use photovoltaic panels for a power plant? They're nice for small applications, or for homes, but if you're building a power plant, something like the Solar Energy Generating Systems in the Mojave Desert makes more sense. They make 165MW and I believe only take 1,000 acres (only slightly more than the 365 hectares of this one). They've already been in operation over 20 years, but there doesn't seem to be anyone doing something similar.

SEGS [solel.com]

Re:Photovoltaic vs. SEGS

[mshurpik (198339)]

Yes. SEGS consists of parabolic mirrors that focus the sun's heat on a water pipe to create steam. Once you realize that solar rays can be focused to extreme temperatures, the idea of steam follows naturally.

Mirrors+water+sun=very cheap and effective. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a major generation method. For a large scale app you would want a turbine, but on a small scale you could probably do some interesting things with just the steam itself.

After all, the first solar app I saw as a kid was just to heat water for the home. Pipes+black paint+water pump=fewer oil deliveries. Why don't more people do this?

Re:

[joib (70841)]

Concentrating solar power works comparatively better in areas with little cloud cover, since they are entirely dependent on direct radiation, vs. normal solar cells which at least get some output from diffuse light.

Translation

[pipingguy (566974)]

FTA: The Sarnia solar farm will be enormous by comparison, stretching across nearly 365 hectares, the equivalent of 419 Canadian football fields.

For you metric-challenged Americans, that equates to about 25.74 Libraries of Congresses.

Re:

[The Other White Meat (59114)]

We measure in NASCAR race tracks hereabout these days.

Using Homestead Speedway as a baseline at 600 acres,
that there solar plant will take 1.5 Nascars of space.

simcity

[avoision (622708)]

I sure hope that they didn't enable disasters or the space monster might take the solar plant out. Anyway, it'll fall down in exactly 10 years, so what's the point?

Re:simcity

[jez9999 (618189)]

In Simcity2k, the best way to get power was to raise a block of 3x3 land, cover it with water, and build 9 hydro plants on it. Never blow up. :-)

Well

[ShooterNeo (555040)]

I think I need to inject some common sense into the arguments here. Yes, with current technology and costs, nuclear power may be cheaper.

But think about it for a moment : in the long run (as in next 10-20 years), what form of energy is subject to the biggest reduction in costs?

Solar : You make the panels. As soon as the technology stabilizes and we finally agree on a dirt cheap, efficient form of panel (there's about 20 different methods talked about) you build a plant that makes acres of it all day long. Every piece exactly like all the others. Fully automated. You truck them to a spot in barren wasteland, and dump them. Plug them in. A simple robot washes the grit off every now and then.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect a factor of TEN reduction in cost. After all, the raw materials are low grade silicon wafers and energy (which can be supplied by panels produced by the plant itself...)

As for land : I calculated that at 10% net efficiency, we would need a 200x200 mile area of Arizona to power the entire United States. That includes all the energy used for transportation, and losses used in spinning up energy accumulator devices. That land currently sits idle, and while is a lot of area, there's still plenty of Arizona left (I used google earth to check this)

Nuclear : while solar requires only a handful of educated people, and can't be screwed up catostrophically, nuclear will ALWAYS require a lot of skilled labor to handle and high liability. Even the most dummy proof pebble ped reactor design would still need all sorts of care to handle the fuel and maintainence on the plant. You can't cut corners on nuclear. You can't mass produce
the plants as easily.

Everything that comes into proximity of the reactor becomes nuclear waste. It all has to be carefully handled. There's hazardous environments, especially for a plant that does reprocessing, where hot spent fuel has to be handled and worked with.

I like nuclear power : it's complex and cool and involves all sorts of neat things. Fusion is even cooler. But realistically, for the forseeable future solar is a MUCH better prospect. I believe had a few billion been sunk into a robotic factory to manufacture solar panels, we would not even be having this debate.

(when I say forseeable...I mean it. There's actually a VASTLY more efficient way to do interplanetary, and even interstellar, travel that doesn't involve fusion or fission plants...)

Re:

[grumling (94709)]

That's all well and good, we keep hearing the same thing... An area the size of (insert badlands state here) will power all the homes in the world. Last I heard, other than a few key locations (Las Vegas, Phoenix), there really aren't too many people in these areas. That means a lot of distribution needs to be installed. Sure, there's a lot there already due to the big dams, but efficiencies go way down once you start to push power on the grid. It is much better to generate power close to where it is consum

Hectares?

[SirBruce (679714)]

What sort of crazy measurement is that? In God-given units, that's it's 90.1934642 square furlongs or 144,309.543 square rods.

Re:

[triikan (1035650)]

The advantage solar power brings is that peak usage is during the day, which happens to be just exactly when solar power is being produced. So, the coal powered plants don't have to work at as high of an output, and during the night, it still operates normally (in most areas, traditional plants operating at minimal levels (they can't be fully shut down on a nightly basis) produce more than enough electricity to meet night demands). Solar plants, unless combined with a storage mechanism (hydrogen productio

Re:While it is a good idea

[Detritus (11846)]

It looks like a poor choice of location for solar power.

Take a look at this map:

http://www.solar4power.com/map2-global-solar-power .html [solar4power.com]

That seemed weird to me

[raygundan (16760)]

It's a huge chunk of space set up to power 10,000 homes, when it's a safe bet that the rooftops of 10,000 homes have more surface area than this power plant already. Some of them won't have a clear view of the sky, and some of them will be at lousy angles-- but I'm sure you could do it.

I suppose centralizing it makes maintenance easier, though. Things like this seem like they would make more sense in the southwestern US. I'm sure we could spare a few square miles of desert, and the power production would