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McGraw-Hill, Google To Add Solar Megawatts

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IRA Flatow, host: You're listening SCIENCES Friday. Ira Flatow I am. Until the next growing quiet, but constant solar energy. You can not hear much, and it is quite surprising. For example, take a guess where the site is the largest center for solar energy worldwide. It's just been finalized this week. Want to guess Germany, China, Spain? Nope. California.Ground was broken today in California near Palm Springs in what is billed as the world's largest solar energy facility. The project will provide 1000 megawatts of power. This is enough for 300,000 homes, and put it on par with a conventional coal plant or a fossil fuel nuclear power reactor.

And across the country, The McGraw-Hill has announced plans to build what he says that the biggest private solar system in the United States at its headquarters in New Jersey. And Google is back at it again with a new solar adventure. This time they tackle residential solar.Joining me now is my guess Alexis Madrigal, author of "Turning the dream. The history and the promise of green technology" is also editor of The Atlantic. Welcome to SCIENCE Friday.

ALEXIS MADRIGAL: Oh, thank you for the.

Flatow: It's a huge project here in California.

Madrigal: It's huge, and I really think what it shows is that solar energy really starts to scale so that I think people have hoped and waited long, but n ' has never been panned in the past, you know, for example, during the 1970s.

Flatow: Mm-hmm.This is the Trust's Solar America Blythe Solar Power Project. Is there in the desert?

Madrigal: Yeah. It was there in the Mojave. I mean, I think the Mojave is, as people like to say, Saudi Arabia of solar energy in a way that it has an excellent solar resource. They get tons of sun. And it is close to major population centers of Las Vegas and Los Angeles metropolitan area. And better yet, it corresponds to the peak load of these cities. That is to say, when the sun shines the most during the day and people have their air conditioners on is when you generate the most solar power.And so it makes sense as a business proposition, too.

Flatow: Yeah. And - are other transmission lines in there? Do they have to be built as part of the structure?