These days, power is a big concern for many countries. People are using more and more electricity, but our traditional sources of electricity, coal and oil, are getting smaller and smaller. In addition, both coal and oil power plants create a lot of pollution. How will we get enough electricity in the future?
Some scientists are looking to the sky for answers. The sun is an almost endless source of energy. Every minute, the Earth gets enough energy from the sun to provide the world with electricity for a year. The problem is that this energy is in the form of heat and light. To use this energy, we need to change it into electricity. Solar cells already do this for calculators and other electronics. Unfortunately, solar cells only produce a small amount of electricity. We can make larger solar cells, but it is very expensive.
Instead, scientists are now trying to build solar power plants. These power plants would use thousands of huge mirrors to focus the light of the sun on a small place, where it would create a lot of heat. The heat would then be used to create electricity. This creates more electricity than solar cells, but not enough. The biggest solar power plant in the world creates 15 mega watts of electricity. In contrast, most nuclear power plants create about 1,000 mega watts of electricity.