A solar power tower is a solar power plant that uses fields of hundreds of mirrors to focus sunlight on a boiler to produce electricity.

This new power plant has two towers and 24,000 mirrors and produces around 5 megawatts of power, enough to power about 4000 homes in areas near the Lancaster California power plant. ESolar has strong funding from the likes of Google and other large clean-tech focused venture capital firms.

ESolar's new power plant is small scale, but an excellent demonstration of their technology. The goal of the project (one might say this is the goal of all solar power projects actually) is to produce electricity cheaper than coal. But ESolar seems to have a technology that is impressing people in the know. Already they have contracts to build 465 more megawatts of these solar power towers at three sites in California and New Mexico.

Cost of electric for 4000 homes would be 3- 7million a year or more. Sounds like a good idea !!

Jerry, the CSP power industry is expanding fast providing sorely needed jobs and clean energy.

The company has paired with NRG Energy, Inc., to develop two full-scale power plants totalling 92 megawatts in New Mexico as well as 337 megawatts of further power towers in California. The company plans to begin construction of the New Mexico plant next spring and complete it by the summer of 2011. It has also partnered with the ACME Group in India to develop roughly one gigawatt of power tower capacity in that country. And eSolar is not alone. Rival developer BrightSource has contracted with Southern California Edison for 1,300 megawatts worth of similar power towers, among other projects gaining steam.

However, Thailand's power Dynasty EGAT is and has been "Obstructing" renewable energy development with a particular emphasis against any form of Solar Energy. They want there "Kickbacks" from fossil fuel plants, and they don't want renewable energy cutting into the sales of kilowatt hours.

The end result is huge loss of jobs for Thais and a the sacrifice of a sustainable competitive robust energy efficient economy.

Has the Dept of Interior gotten over the environmental questions related to solar, namely water usage, they had in the west?

primetime-->The water used to make steam for the turbines is recycled by heat exchangers.