I've posted this on other boards, and the story is a few years old, but I recently saw some other news about this project, so it's still going strong.
Energy Independence in 92 Square Miles
Give Ausra CEO Bob Fishman a 92-by-92-mile expanse of desert land -- an area less than one-tenth the size of Nevada -- and he could power the entire United States. Fishman doesn’t control that much land, of course, and transporting electricity all over the country would get tricky. But that doesn’t make the power of Ausra’s solar technology any less mind-boggling.
While most older solar setups depend on pricey photovoltaic panels, Ausra’s installations boast mass-produced mirror clusters that focus the sun’s rays onto water-filled tubes. When the water begins to boil, it produces enough steam to turn an array of turbines. Fishman estimates electricity generated this way will cost 10 to 12 cents per kilowatt-hour -- on par with power from polluting sources such as coal, and 50% less than photovoltaic power. “Photovoltaic is constrained because it uses high-grade silicon,” he says. “We’re using everyday materials -- just steel, glass, and water.”
VC extraordinaire Vinod Khosla invested $25 million in Ausra last year, and Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield, & Byers kicked in another $15 million, a colossal vote of confidence that has proven contagious. In November 2007, Pacific Gas & Electric signed a 20-year power purchasing agreement with the company that will generate more than $1 billion in revenue (Ausra’s first California plant is slated to be up and running by 2010), and Ausra officials are in talks with utilities in Florida and Nevada to cement similar deals. “I don’t think it’s out of the question for us to get 30% of the national grid within 20 years,” Fishman says.
More stupidity, press releases of dreams passes for proof in your mind, you beleive everything you read in a press release? This is why we have our problems, the gulliable and naive beleive all they read.
I actually worked for the company or I should say a smaller company bought by the Giant French Company that owns this company. The Saleman for the Solar side of the business is a convicted drug dealer, caught selling Cocaine to a minor, he spent over a year in prison. He will say anything to anyone, he does not care, I watched him sell a contract for nuclear work over the phone, regardless of if we could do the work in the time he said, he under cut the competition with a pure lie. Which is what you need to sell Solar.
Your article is very old, three years.
where is the 92 square miles of Solar, if the claim was true why was it not built? Further
they will use natural gas to produce the energy to boil the medium to power the turbines that turn the generators. Why use Solar at all, simple, they have convinced the public Solar is clean and worth the very expensive price.
Of course you have to shove it down the throats of Californians first, which is easy,
having a very large illegal mexican voting block that is under educated makes that easy to pass. Having the rest of the population that uses three year old press releases as a source of their knowledge guarantees the measures pass.
Of course you must give the electricity to the poor at a cheap rate, so they have no idea of the true cost, and of course the other rate payers end up paying the bill of the poor.
The date of the press release from your "article".
More recent news is of a company that failed, failed to show that their idea works. That does not matter, just let Obama dump billions and billions of our money into the solar money pit and it will work, just read the press release, it says it works. Yet after three years it was not built.
Financing woes shrink Ausra's big solar plans | Green Tech - CNET News
Ausra President and CEO Bob Fishman told different news outlets this week that the company has been forced to change its business strategy in response to the credit crisis. The company is also laying off staff as part of the reorganization, according to reports.
The change is a clear sign of how the credit crisis and the current structure of government incentives are hurting the business for large-scale renewable-energy projects
Of course now this company has been bought by Areva, a giant corporation is France, by owning this company they meet the EU's laws to trade carbon credits, another huge scam.