Google Invests $168 MIllion in Ivanpah Solar Thermal Plant

Google announced this week that it will be making its largest renewable energy investment to date by investing $168 million in Brightsource Energy's Ivanpah solar thermal power plant in the Mojave desert. The plant will have an installed capacity of 392 MW.

The Ivanpah plant began construction last year and should be completed in 2013. It will employ 173,000 heliostats, each with two mirrors, to concentrate solar energy onto a tower where the heat will make steam that turns a turbine and creates electricity. While other solar thermal projects are in the works in the Southwest, Ivanpah is the largest solar tower project so far.

This type of solar power technology is one that Google is trying to improve upon themselves. The company announced last year that it was working on a more efficient mirror technology that could lower the cost of solar thermal plants.

This latest investment brings Google's total renewable energy investments up to $250 million.

via:   Google & Ecogeek

Google and Facebook Invest in Solar Power

Google announced yesterday a $100 million investment in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm in Oregon. The massive wind power facility, expected to be the largest on shore plant in the world upon completion, will generate 845 MW of clean electricity - enough to power more than 235,000 homes.

Google's latest renewable energy splurge brings its recent investments in clean power generation to more than USD$350 million. In the last couple of weeks, the search giant has also invested in a solar farm in Germany and sunk USD$168 million in the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System project, currently under construction in in the Mojave Desert in California. Google has also made prior investments in green energy, including powering some of its own facilities with solar power.

The other 900 pound gorilla of the online world, Facebook, is also taking some tentative steps towards powering facilities with renewable energy. According to Data Center Knowledge, a 100kw solar panel array has been constructed at Facebook's new 28,000 square meter data center in Prineville, Oregon. The solar power system is expected to generate 204,000 kilowatt hours of solar electricity a year. Facebook will be monitoring the solar farm's performance, with view to perhaps rolling out similar installations at other facilities.

While FaceBook has been heavily criticised for sourcing power for its data centers from coal-fired power generation sources, the company has been placing a special focus on energy efficiency - and sharing that knowledge with the industry.

Facebook set itself a goal to build one of the most efficient and economical computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost and as a result, their Oregon data center uses servers that are 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and operate. The company has released specifications and mechanical drawings through the Open Compute Project.

Source:   Energy Matters

Google Invests In BrightSource's Ivanpah Solar Pro

BrightSource Energy Inc. has closed financing for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. As part of the financing, BrightSource finalized $1.6 billion in loans guaranteed by the U.S. Department of Energy's loan programs office.

The company also announced that Google will join NRG Solar LLC and BrightSource as an equity investor in the project by making a $168 million investment. In October 2010, NRG Solar LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of NRG Energy, announced its commitment to invest up to $300 million to become the lead investor in the project.

The Ivanpah project is located on approximately 3,500 acres of federal land managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in California. The project is a 392 MW solar power facility consisting of three separate solar thermal power plants. The power generated from these solar plants will be sold under separate contracts with Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.

SOURCE: BrightSource Energy Inc.