What would you do if someone tried to sell you 245 megawatts of solar energy? Even if you had the money you wouldn't know where to put the energy, or what to do with it. Well, Southern California Edison does have the money as well as the knowhow and it's bringing cheap, solar generated energy into 160,000 homes by 2012.
That sounds like a long time from now but let's think about the amount of energy we're talking about here: Your average light bulb at home runs on 40-70 watts. A megawatt is equal to one million watts. So, we're talking about 245 million watts. That's a lot of power.
The company behind this new influx of energy is ESolar Inc., a subsidiary of Pasadena's own Idealab. Believe it or not the technology they're employing is steam based. Heliostats, or mirrors, will reflect the sun's rays into vats of water which will boil and produce steam. The steam in turn will operate turbines which will then create electricity. Cool, huh?
With environmental issues and a world energy crisis looming it's good to know that there are clean and safe ways to power our lives.