Google drops support of world’s largest solar energy plant
Rendering of one of Ivanpah's Power Blocks, from Solar Thermal Magazine
In light of a series of budget cuts, Google is dropping a substantial part of its support for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which will be the largest system of its kind in the world when it is finished in 2013.
Google has already invested $168 million dollars into the project, which is a substantial amount. What Google is dropping is it’s continued support of the project, which was largely in the field of research. A large part of the reason to drop support is that Google has recently been cutting products “that haven’t had the impact they were looking for”. Some of these other products was Google Bookmarks, Google Friend Connect, and Google Wave.
Some of the research Google was working on was to improve the reflectors and wind resistance of the mirrors, and to lower their cost.
Four years ago, Google endorsed an initiative to make renewable energy cheaper than coal. These latest developments reflect a change in the Google philosophy. Google still has money invested in other renewable energy projects, but it seems it may be winding down on its initative generally.
Also, Bill Weihl, the company’s energy czar, also left this month. It is being speculated, among other things, whether his leaving isn’t merely a coincidence, but is a symptom of Google’s different philosophy on renewable energy.
The Ivanpah plant will feature numerous power blocks, featuring thousands of solar panels (aka heliostats) reflecting sunlight toward a black-painted (for heat absorption) liquid-filled tower that would generate steam. The entire plant would produce almost 4 megawatts of electricity (basically, almost four million watts of electricity.
