What Are Solar Power Plants?

Although not nearly as common as other types of power plants, such as those that use coal, solar power plants are gaining popularity as a clean and renewable source of energy that just about any place on earth can implement.

Identification

• Solar power plants generate electricity using natural energy produced by the sun. They are intended for large-scale use, such as providing power to entire community.

Types

• Some solar power plants use an array of photovoltaic (PV) cells, which create voltage much like a battery. Others concentrate thermal energy, or heat, on a fluid to heat water and create steam to run turbines.

Features

• PV solar power plants only vary in size. Thermal plants come in three varieties: parabolic troughs, power tower and solar dish. Parabolic troughs, shaped like a parabola, focus the sun's rays on a pipe that heats a fluid moving through it. The solar dish concentrates light but heats a compressed fluid that expands to make a piston or turbine run. In a tower, thousands of mirrors reflect sunlight onto a an absorber connected to a heat exchanger.

Fact

• As of 2009, Olmedilla Photovoltaic Park in Olmedilla de Alarcon, Spain, was world's largest PV solar power plant. The 700-acre facility generated 60 megawatts of electricity each day.

Considerations

• Although they use a free resource and generate little waste, solar power plants can interrupt a desert ecosystem by killing birds and insects that move into the path of concentrated sunlight, according to the Department of Energy. In addition, some plants use toxic chemicals in their heat exchanger that can seep into the environment.