The Atacama Desert is one of thedriest home on our planet ; it is a 128,000 hearty km ( 49,000 straight miles ) tableland that in some position seesless than three millimeters(0.12 inches ) of pelting in an full yr . With this in mind , it may seem rummy that the Chilean companyValhallaare provision to build a immense hydroelectric power plant right on the edge of it .
Thishydroelectric plantwill be fairly like in excogitation to many others around the world . water supply from a great elevation will be dropped down through exorbitant slopes , causing turbines to spin and generate vitality ; the water finally flows out to a river or into the sea . The Valhalla project is n’t technically too different from this basic innovation .
The $ 400 million ( £ 260 million ) project will take advantage of two of the desert ’s other large characteristic , other than its decided lack of rain . The first is the desert ’s effective border with the Pacific Ocean to the western United States : theAndes mountains , the foresighted continental mountain scope in the worldly concern at 7,000 kilometers ( 4,300 miles ) in length .
At an average height of 4,000 meters ( 13,000 foot ) , they provide lot of sufficient elevation for a hydroelectric dekameter . Seawater will be pumped up into the mount , allowed to stay there for very recollective periods of prison term , and relinquish downriver through the turbine when electricity is required to be generated .
The two mountaintop reservoir can contain 22,000 Olympian swimming pools of water , close to tantamount to 55 million cubic meter ( 1.9 billion cubic invertebrate foot ) . This impressive storage capacity mean that electricity can be generated 24 hour a day .
Image citation : The location of the offer hydroelectric power industrial plant . Valhalla / Google Maps
The entire complex will have a electrical capacity of 300 megawatts , comparable to theadvanced solar magnate plantcurrently being build up in Morocco . This will be enough to power three of Chile ’s provinces – one that swear heavy on the significance of fossil fuels .
Of course , pumping the water up into the mint will still require vitality , and this is where the 2nd machine characteristic of theAtacama Desertcomes in : its faithfully gay skies . agree to the company ’s website , they will use “ two-sided turbine ” within a “ cave of machine , ” power by solar vim , to pump the water supply up into the mountain man-made lake at a charge per unit of 45 cubic meters ( 1,590 three-dimensional feet ) each day .
The projection has been given the go beforehand by environmental representation , but they are still looking for investor in the labor . Valhalla hope to complete the construction in three and a one-half years ’ metre , begin of late next yr .
