Spanish Gold? Here, the Air Shimmers with Sunlight

In the right light, solar power can be downright gorgeous. Just ask those who have been lucky enough to see this new Spanish installation.

Out in the Andalusian countryside, where three hundred sunny days a year would count as gloomy, six hundred mirrors keep busy reflecting the sun’s rays towards the top of this single 40-story tower lined with water pipes. The mirrors’ collective solar wallop turns the water into steam, cranking huge turbines that generate 11 Megawatts of electricity - enough to power 6,000 local homes.

This is all thanks to the Spanish renewable energy company Abengoa, which built this plant with the help of Spanish government subsidies.When the next few thousand mirrors are finally set into place (hopefully by 2013), this commercial solar plant – Europe’s first - hopes to power all of nearby Seville, population 700,000. Moreover, there’s more to come: similar plants are being built in Morocco and Algeria. Abengoa is negotiating to build more in California, and the Sunbelt states of Nevada and New Mexico.

In the meantime, the air literally shimmers, like something out of a biblical oil painting. Water vapor and dust hanging in the air around the tower are illuminated and even vaporized in the heat, wreathing the plant in what looks like pale jets of ghostly gas. A CNN reporter calls it ‘a most unusual tower.

Click on the image above to play the video.

Not to be verbally outdone, a reporter from the BBC says he was reminded of the tractor beam used by Dr. Evil during Austin Powers in Goldmember. Hey, maybe that’s what solar power needs to really take off in Britain: more Mike Myers. And sharks. Sharks with friggin’ laser beams.

Further reading:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6616651.stm

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13826548

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