Improper positioning of the mirrors led to a fire at the largest thermal solar power station in the USA
Over 350 thousand mirrors that focus the sun's rays on three boilers at an altitude of 140 meters have been installed on the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.
Recently, a fire broke out at the largest US thermal power station. It was possible to extinguish the fire without any particular problems, if we ignore the fact that the firefighters had to climb to a height of about 100 meters.
The cause of the fire is an error in focusing a number of mirrors that, instead of a boiler, sent rays to another point. The result is an electrical cable fire. The representative of the company - the operator of the power plant said that it was too early to talk about the reason for the incident, since the technical details of the incident are being investigated.
Localization of the fire took only a few minutes, nothing terrible happened. But here the elimination of the consequences of a fire will take more time, since the ignited cables led to the deformation of the air ducts and the steam line. Immediately after the incident, the tower was turned off, and so far the company does not report on the time of its restart.
The power plant produces electricity in an amount that is sufficient to supply 140,000 Californian households. In total, the site has three towers with boilers. One, as mentioned above, is disabled for repair. The second is also disabled - scheduled preventive work is carried out. So now only one tower remains in operation.
The power plant was built two years ago. Its total cost is $ 2.2 billion. Each of the 350,000 mirrors is equal in size to a garage door (automatic doors are meant). The total area of the station is 1.3 km 2 . Each of the mirrors can change the angle of inclination and the direction of inclination on command from the center. Once a fortnight mirrors are washed (at night). A proprietary system SFINCS (Solar Field Integrated Control System) was created to control all the mirrors.
About the station:
Co-owners: NRG Energy; BrightSource Energy; Google
Email Generation energy per year: 1,079,232 MW * h / year
Installed power: 392 MW
Annual solar irradiation: 2,717 kW * h / m 2 / year