Girasoles Mecánicos en California…
Algunos habrán oído hablar de estos paneles solares. Se trata de mecanismos que “persiguen la luz del día” y están siendo utilizados con éxito en el mundo. En California, dentro del objetivo de obtener un 20% de su energía por medios renovables para fines del 2010, comenzará a operar una granja gigante de estos “girasoles” (English).
(NPR) Currently, renewable energy provides only 12 percent of the state’s needs. Green energy is needed, and fast. Where to get it? The southeastern corner of California is becoming the state’s Wild West of renewable energy.Five years from now this patch of desert will hold one of the largest solar thermal plants in the world. An area of 10 square miles will be filled with 38,000 “sun catchers,” which look like enormous satellite dishes with mirrors.
A High-Tech Sunflower
“So they activate and they start tracking the sunlight throughout the day. Like sunflowers in a sense,” says Kevin Harper, a project manager for Phoenix-based Stirling Energy, which develops solar power equipment for power plants.
It will produce enough energy to power more than 600,000 homes on the other side of the mountains in San Diego.
“To me, it’s an engineering feat,” he says. “It’s much like what happened with hydropower with the Hoover Dam and whatnot. Much like a national monument someday – a point in time when we took a step towards renewable energy for commercial power.”
The Bureau of Land Management has received 163 applications to build solar and wind projects on 1.6 million acres of federal land in California. Almost all of them are planned for the Imperial Valley and the desert region north of the valley.