[gondramB]

Stirling's concentrated solar dish -- unlike photovoltaic panels that collect sunlight on a much smaller scale -- harnesses heat from the sun with 82 mirrors and reflects

Well that does sound smarter than the old way.... but $3 billion dollars and 31,000 acres of California land - means this is gonna be some expensive electricity - they could have had a decent nuclear plant instead and gotten cheap electricity.

[snowsislander]

He estimated that it could cost roughly a quarter-billion dollars to construct and install every 50 megawatts of solar power -- but the pollution-free and renewable source pays for itself over time with little maintenance.

To me, that's the most interesting question: how much are they going to have to shell out annually for maintenance and upkeep?

[Getready]

I think one square mile is equal to 640 acres.So 7 square miles
should be 4480 acres.

All I could say is 'bout time. I just hope this isn't
a market "pump and dump" scheme where they highly
tout a product, then as soon as word gets out, and the stock
prices start to rise, or investment capital increases,
they dump the stock, or siphon off the investment capital
and the project goes belly up...

We'll see, but we need to get off of foreign oil...that would be
completely coool...This could be a great lesson to China,
and Europe, so they won't have to use as much foreign oil...
I am sure the loss of oil sales volume would severely depress
the price of oil.