Moar pwr, from molten salt

Here is a prototype that I once saw on the discover channel, and now the internet has brought it to me.  It's a solar power plant that has a twist on it.  It takes the energy from the sun (ya ya I know you know) and then it heats a vat of salt until it becomes molten.  You may ask, well that sounds stupid, why do that?  Well here's the deal, power from the sun is intermittent.  The molten salt is used as a capacitor to store the energy that the solar panels collected. The molten salt is passed along to a steam generator to (create steam and) power a turbine.  There you have it, power all day long.

According to SolarReserve the plant would use an array of 15,000, 25 foot-wide, tilting mirrors which would direct sunlight to a solar collector sitting a top a 600 foot tower.  Inside the collector would be molten salt.  The mirrors would heat the salt to over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

From energyboom.com & cnet.com

Image from power-technology.com via energyboom.com