Solar Plant Generates Power For Six Hours After Sunset

KCET.org/ReWire | By Chris Clarke | Link to article

A solar thermal power plant in the Arizona desert just showed that solar power doesn’t have to stop working when the sun goes down. On Wednesday, Abengoa Solar announced that its 280-megawatt Solana plant near Gila Bend, Arizona, which just started delivering power to Arizona’s largest utility, was able to keep putting out electrical power six hours after the sun set.

Arizona Public Service, which supplies 11 million Arizonans with electricity, will buy all the power generated by the project for 30 years — and that power will apparently be generated day or night.

The Solana plant, which occupies about 1,900 acres in southwest Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, combines parabolic trough mirror technology with molten salt thermal storage.

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