Lunch with Arnold

January 20th, 2010

As intriguing and as baffling as ever

I have always had a problem with Arnold. His speech is not the clearest and he uses words that are not in my vocabulary; but he is quite the most fascinating man I have ever met. A real-life successful and proven inventor. Arnold J. Goldman has quite a track record. He was the VP of Engineering and co-Founder of Lexitron, the first word processing company in the US, listed on NASDAQ in 1974. He went on to establish Luz International and served as its CEO. Luz designed, constructed, financed, and operated the world’s 9 largest Solar Electric Generating Systems which, at the time, generated 90 percent of the world’s solar electricity. These power stations are in the Mojave Desert in California and 20 years after they were built are still supplying electricity as they were designed to do.

Currently

Today Arnold is the Chairman and Founder of BrightSource Energy who are about to build the world’s largest solar power generating plant in California. The technology is simple and the energy is clean, both vital factors. Large flat mirrors reflect the sun onto a high tower which holds tanks of water; the water boils and the resulting steam is used to drive a turbine which produces electricity. That’s it in a nutshell. In fact it’s more complicated. The focus of the mirrors on the target has to be precise and many other factors have to be correct. But it is eminently do-able, and if anyone can make it work, it’s Arnold.

Money

The money involved in these projects is staggering. Generally the cost of development of electricity generation is enormous but such projects are usually funded by governments. In the case of Arnold’s projects, he had to put the financing in place. It’s not his money, but he has to organize it, no easy task when it runs into billions. The coming project, called the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, is a 440 megawatt solar power facility which consisting of 3 separate solar thermal power plants. The project is due to start in 2010.  The Ivanpah plant will produce enough clean energy to power 150,000 homes and displace more than 450,000 tons of Carbon Dioxide annually, which is the equivalent of taking more than 75,000 cars off the roads.

The storage problem

The storage of solar generated energy is an ongoing issue. Man had discovered how to  make energy from the sun and as long as the sun shines there is no problem creating energy. But after the sun has set or on cloudy days you cannot generate solar energy. So you generate it during sunshine hours, but where do you store it for use that night?

The money making challenge

If you have an inventive mind and you want to make money, great globs of it, as in billions, dream up an energy storage system. There are thousands of solar energy producers all over the world waiting for you.

Payday Advance Loans Cash Advance Loans

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website