Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Wow!

Occasionally, I see something that just makes me say "WOW!" This is one of those things.


Solar towers in Spain, providing electricity to the city of Seville. Each tower is surrounded by hundreds of mirrors called heliostats. They reflect the sun's light up to a point on the tower. This heats water which runs a turbine.


The heliostats are controlled by computer, so that they adjust the mirrors to catch the sun's rays as the angle changes.


The Spanish government dedicated a large amount of funding to create this solar power system.


When I first saw a picture of this, I thought it looked like science fiction. I guess I'm fascinated by things that look "larger than life". Not only that, but I think it makes great sense to harness natural energy rather than use up all the non-renewable fuel in the world.

3 comments:

rachel said...

How amazing! If only we had enough sunshine in Britain for such a project! (Or if drizzly rain could be harnessed to produce energy....)

judy in ky said...

True... they do get a lot of sun in Spain. There should be some way to harness drizzly rain, shouldn't there?

ArtyZen said...

We drove past this amazing thing just a few weeks ago - it was really wow!