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19 Mar, 2014

Glare from world’s biggest solar power plant is blinding pilots in-flight – Quartz

Airplane pilots reported that they were blinded by the intense sunlight reflecting off some of the 340,000 mirrors at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System on the California-Nevada border. Yet six months elapsed before their reports reached the regulator that oversees the plant, which is located near the Las Vegas airport.

The mirrors, called heliostats, focus the sun on 459-foot-high (140 meter) towers that contain water-filled boilers. The concentrated sunlight boils the water to create steam, driving turbines that generate 377 megawatts of carbon-free electricity. The heat is so blistering that it has melted the feathers of birds in mid-flight.

Read the rest: Pilots complain that glare from the world’s biggest solar power plant is blinding them – Quartz.