Google continues to be awesome and invest $168 Million into solar

I caught this today on Treehugger

Google has continued its support for green energy and technologies by funding a solar thermal power plant in the middle of the Mojave Desert in California. Its $168 million dollar investment will go to fun the 392MW Ivanpah Solar Plant. Construction on Ivanpah started last fall and has a expected completion date in the year 2013. Google's reason for investing so heavily into this specific plant is to help this solar tech reach its maturity and return more on the investment.

Solar Thermal Plants, like Ivanpah, use hundreds or thousands of mirrors called heliostats to focus the suns light on one singular point. We have all seen what happens when you focus the suns light on a leaf using a magnifying glass, the leaf heats up and burns. These heliostat mirrors do something similar, minus the fire, by focusing the suns light onto a huge tower. At the top of this tower is the focus point, where water is heated up into steam. And that steam is HOT, to the tune of 1000*F!! That steam is then used to drive a turbine generator and produce electricity, LOTS of it! Like I mentioned, Ivanpah is a 392MW plant, which over its 25 year lifetime will offset the of about 90,000 cars. Ivanpah's heliostat mirror array consists of 346,000 mirrors and a 450 foot tall tower.

Rock on Google for investing so much money into clean energy! Their grand total, according to Treehugger, is now $250 Million!