Solar Power Tower

The CSIRO has claimed a world record for the highest temperatures ever recorded using solar energy to generate "supercritical" steam at its solar thermal test plant in Newcastle, Australia. This achievement is touted as a breakthrough for solar energy production.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is now fully operational. The 392 MW plant is expected to generate enough electricity to power 140,000 homes each year. NRG announced last week that each of the plant's three units is now supplying electricity to California’s grid.

A new technique developed by the University of Colorado Boulder team converts sunshine and water directly into usable hydrogen fuel. Solar plants using this technique could produce 100,000 kg hydrogen per day, which they claim is enough fuel to run approximately 5,200 hydrogen-fuel cell buses daily.

With the calender having rolled over into another year, it's an ideal time to take a look back at some of the most significant and far-reaching breakthroughs that we saw during 2011.

The Gemasolar Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant near Seville, Spain, has achieved a full 24 hours of solar power production one month after starting commercial production.

the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has awarded Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne US$10.2 million to develop technologies aimed at significantly lowering the electricity costs of concentrated solar power towers and thermal storage systems.

Google has chipped in a US$168 million investment in what will be the world's largest solar power tower plant to be located on 3,600 acres of land in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California.

SolarReserve has received approval for the first solar power plant in California that uses molten salt technology to store the sun’s thermal energy as heat so it can generate electricity when needed.

A new type of solar thermal field, tower and research facility is being built in Australia that requires only air and the sun, making it ideal for parts of the world that receive minimal rainfall.

Shams 1, to be built in the UAE and boasting a capacity of 100MW, will be the largest concentrated solar power plant in the world.

The Chinese government has announced its intention to construct a 2-gigawatt solar power plant in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia.

With 1,291 mirrored heliostats and a 54 story high tower, the world's largest solar power tower plant is now on line near Seville in Spain.