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Monday, April 11, 2011


Google Invests $168 Million In BrightSource Energy Solar Plant

Google (GOOG) on Monday disclosed that it has invested $168 million in a solar energy power plant being developed in the Mojave Desert by the startup BrightSource Energy. The project, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, when completed in 2013 will supposedly be the largest solar project in the world. Google notes that it has now invested over $250 million in the clean energy sector, and that this deal is the company’s single largest investment to date.

Ivanpah is a solar concentrator project, using fields of mirrors, known as heliostats, to concentrate sunlight onto a solar receiver on top of a tower. (This project when finished will include 173,000 heliostats.)  The concentrated sunlight is used to heat water, generating steam which is used to turn a traditional turbine and generator to produce electricity.

This really is an impressive project. But I can’t help thinking about what’s not being said here. Why is Google, a company under siege from competition on every side, spending $168 million on building a solar energy project? If I were a shareholder in Google, I might wonder why the company is investing in a project so far away from the company’s core business. While there’s no question that Google’s giant data centers require vast amounts of power, the company’s expertise is in information and online advertising, not generating electric power. When companies start investing shareholder cash in projects far outside their core businesses, it raises serious questions about focus.

“We hope that investing in Ivanpah spurs continued development and deployment of this promising technology while encouraging other companies to make similar investments in renewable energy,” Google said in the blog post announcing the deal. That certainly is an admirable sentiment, and I certainly find sympathetic the notion that Google should commit to buying green power. But worthy though the Ivanpah project may be, I can’t see how this has anything to do with Google’s core mission of organizing all the world’s information. Indeed, you have to wonder what interesting startups Google might have added to the fold with that same $168 million.


Source and/or read more: http://goo.gl/iPLGP

Publisher and/or Author and/or Managing Editor:__Andres Agostini ─ @Futuretronium at Twitter! Futuretronium Book at http://3.ly/rECc