A solar power tower is a solar power plant that uses fields of hundreds of mirrors to focus sunlight on a boiler to produce electricity.

This new power plant has two towers and 24,000 mirrors and produces around 5 megawatts of power, enough to power about 4000 homes in areas near the Lancaster California power plant. ESolar has strong funding from the likes of Google and other large clean-tech focused venture capital firms.

ESolar's new power plant is small scale, but an excellent demonstration of their technology. The goal of the project (one might say this is the goal of all solar power projects actually) is to produce electricity cheaper than coal. But ESolar seems to have a technology that is impressing people in the know. Already they have contracts to build 465 more megawatts of these solar power towers at three sites in California and New Mexico. (less info)