Google said on Monday it has invested US$168 million to help complete the construction of one of the world’s biggest solar energy power plants in California’s Mojave Desert.
The plant, which is being developed by BrightSource Energy, will generate 392 gross megawatts (MW) of clean solar energy when it is completed in 2013, enough to supply power to 85,000 homes a year.
“That’s the equivalent of taking more than 90,000 cars off the road over the lifetime of the plant, projected to be more than 25 years,” Google’s director of green business operations Rick Needham said in a blog post. “The investment makes business sense and will help ensure that one of the world’s largest solar energy projects is completed.”
Meanwhile, the US Department of Energy said it has finalized US$1.6 billion in loan guarantees to support the Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System.
“Today’s announcement is creating over 1,000 jobs in California while laying the foundation for thousands more clean energy jobs across the country in the future,” US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement.
“Through the loan program we are supporting some of the largest, most innovative clean energy projects in the world, and those investments are helping us to out-compete and out-innovate our global competitors to win the future,” Chu said.
The Ivanpah project uses mirrors called heliostats to focus the rays of the sun onto a solar receiver on top of a tower. Steam generated by the solar receiver spins a turbine and generator to make electricity.
The Ivanpah Power Tower will be 137m tall when it is completed and will use more than 173,000 dual-mirror heliostats. The project is being built by Bechtel and construction began in October last year.
Google said the BrightSource investment brings the company’s total investment in clean energy projects to US$250 million.
Seperately, PushLife, a mobile music service based in Toronto, said on Monday that it has been acquired by Google. Details of the transaction were not released, but the technology blog StartupNorth put the purchase price at US$25 million.
“As Google is driving innovation on the mobile Web across a wide variety of areas, we thought joining the company would be a perfect fit,” PushLife said in a statement on its Web site.
The firm said it would join Google’s engineering team in Canada to help build mobile applications.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
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