At its Surface event in New York City today, Microsoft refreshed its Surface Laptop with updated specs, USB-C support, and AMD Ryzen 7. From a report: This is the first time a Surface device has been powered by AMD. Furthermore, while the Surface Laptop 2 only came in a 13.5-inch size, the Surface Laptop 3 is available in 13.5-inch and 15-inch flavors. The Surface Laptop 3 starts at $999 (same as the Surface Laptop 2 and the original Surface Laptop). The 15-inch version starts at $1,199. The Surface Laptop 3 is available for preorder today and ships on October 22. Panos Panay, head of engineering for all of Microsoft's devices, said the Surface Laptop has the highest customer satisfaction of any laptop in its class. He shared that the trackpad is 20% larger, the hard drive is removable, and the laptop is now available in a machined aluminum finish.

Aerospace startup Relativity Space -- the company that aims to launch the first fully 3D-printed rocket to orbit -- says it has raised all of the money it needs to launch its first mission and then enter commercial operations as early as 2021. After raising $140 million in its latest funding round, Relativity says its total funding now equals $185 million, which is enough money to carry the company through its first flights over the next couple of years. The Verge reports: Started by former engineers at Blue Origin and SpaceX, Relativity has grand ambitions to create all of its vehicles -- from the engines to the fuselage -- using 3D printing almost exclusively. The goal is to overhaul how rockets have been built for the last 50 years by taking people out of the manufacturing process and automating almost everything. By building rockets this way, Relativity claims it can drastically cut down costs by requiring fewer parts per rocket. Eventually, the company hopes to replicate this 3D-printing process on another world, like Mars, creating a rocket that can take off from the planet and return to Earth.

Right now, the company is focusing on its first rocket, the Terran 1, a small- to medium-sized vehicle being built with Relativity's specialized Stargate 3D printers in Los Angeles. Relativity says these updated printers could eventually create a Terran 1 rocket in less than 60 days from raw material. "Those are actually twice the print size of the prior version, and we have several of those already up and operational," says [Relativity Space CEO Tim Ellis] of the updated printers. Designed to stand about 100 feet tall, the Terran 1 rocket will be able to carry up to 2,755 pounds (1,250 kilograms) of payload, which is just 6 percent of the capacity of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. However, the company says it has increased the size of the vehicle's nose cone, or payload fairing, making it able to hold twice the volume as originally planned.

Seattle startup Picnic has emerged from stealth mode with a system that assembles custom pizzas with little human intervention. According to GeekWire, "Picnic's platform assembles up to 300 12-inch pizzas per hour, far faster than most restaurants would be able to make the dough, bake and serve the pizzas." From the report: That speed comes in handy in places where large numbers of orders come in during a rush, such as at a stadium or in large cafeterias. It's also compact enough that it could theoretically be installed in a food truck. Machines have been making frozen pizzas for years, but Picnic's robot differs in a few respects. It's small enough to fit in most restaurant kitchens, the recipes can be easily tweaked to suit the whims of the restaurants, and -- most importantly -- the ingredients are fresh.

There are also a few details that may save Picnic's pizzas from tasting as if a robot made them. For starters, the dough preparation, sauce making and baking -- the real art of pizza -- is left in the capable, five-fingered hands of people. The robot is also highly customizable, comprised of a series of modules that dole out whatever toppings you want in whichever order you choose. Once an order for a pizza has been made, it enters a digital queue in the platform, which starts making the pie as soon as the dough is put in place. The robot has a vision system that allows it to make adjustments if the pie is slightly off-center. It's also hooked up to the internet and sends data back to Picnic so the system can learn from mistakes. The report says their business model is essentially pizza-as-a-service. "Restaurant owners pay a regular fee in return for the system and ongoing maintenance as well as software and hardware updates," reports GeekWire. "The startup has launched at Centerplate, a caterer in the Seattle Mariners' T-Mobile Park baseball stadium, as well as Zaucer, a restaurant in Redmond, Wash."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Prolific science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) developed the Three Laws of Robotics, in the hope of guarding against potentially dangerous artificial intelligence. They first appeared in his 1942 short story Runaround:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov fans tell us that the laws were implicit in his earlier stories. A 0th law was added in Robots and Empire (1985): "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."

[...] Chris Stokes, a philosopher at Wuhan University in China, says, "Many computer engineers use the three laws as a tool for how they think about programming." But the trouble is, they don't work. He explains in an open-access paper (PDF):

The First Law fails because of ambiguity in language, and because of complicated ethical problems that are too complex to have a simple yes or no answer.
The Second Law fails because of the unethical nature of having a law that requires sentient beings to remain as slaves.
The Third Law fails because it results in a permanent social stratification, with the vast amount of potential exploitation built into this system of laws.
The 'Zeroth' Law, like the first, fails because of ambiguous ideology. All of the Laws also fail because of how easy it is to circumvent the spirit of the law but still remaining bound by the letter of the law.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Household appliances will become easier to repair thanks to new standards being adopted across the European Union. From 2021, firms will have to make appliances longer-lasting, and they will have to supply spare parts for machines for up to 10 years. The rules apply to lighting, washing machines, dishwashers and fridges. But campaigners for the "right to repair" say they do not go far enough as only professionals -- not consumers -- will be able carry out the repairs. The legislation has been prompted by complaints from consumers across Europe and North America infuriated by machines that break down when they are just out of warranty. Under the European Commission's new standards, manufacturers will have to make spares, such as door gaskets and thermostats, available to professional repairers. These parts will have to be accessible with commonly-available tools and without damaging the product. Manufacturers say they are only making the parts available for independent professionals because if consumers were allowed to buy spares and mend their own machines it would raise questions about risk and liability.

The report also notes that "star ratings for the energy efficiency of appliances will be ratcheted up," which "could directly save 20 billion euros on energy bills per year in Europe from 2030 onwards -- equivalent to 5% of EU electricity consumption."

According to a newly published support document, Apple says the new iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max will present customers with a warning if the devices are unable to verify a genuine display after a screen repair job. "If you need to replace your iPhone display, it's important for certified technicians who use genuine Apple display parts to repair it," the page reads. "Replacements not performed by Apple, authorized service providers, or certified technicians might not follow proper safety and repair procedures and could result in improper function or issues with display quality or safety." The Verge reports: Apple goes over a laundry list of problems that could arise if your display is swapped the wrong way or with a non-genuine part, such as multi-touch problems, issues with screen color accuracy and brightness, or True Tone failing to work properly. "Additionally, repairs that don't properly replace screws or cowlings might leave behind loose parts that could damage the battery, cause overheating, or result in injury." The company isn't afraid of nagging customers about this, either. Apple says that a notification will appear on the affected iPhone's lock screen for 4 days after a problem is first detected, then it'll move to the main settings menu for 15 more days. After all that, it gets pushed away to Settings -> General -> About. According to Apple, this new measure only applies to its brand new iPhones and not previous models. Even if it can't be verified as genuine, the display isn't prevented from functioning normally by iOS.

Windows ships with a full volume encryption tool called BitLocker. The feature used to trust any SSD that claimed to offer its own hardware-based encryption, but that changed in the KB4516071 update to Windows 10 released on September 24, which now assumes that connected SSDs don't actually encrypt anything. From a report: "SwiftOnSecurity" called attention to this change on September 26. The pseudonymous Twitter user then reminded everyone of a November 2018 report that revealed security flaws, such as the use of master passwords set by manufacturers, of self-encrypting drives. That meant people who purchased SSDs that were supposed to help keep their data secure might as well have purchased a drive that didn't handle its own encryption instead. Those people were actually worse off than anticipated because Microsoft set up BitLocker to leave these self-encrypting drives to their own devices. This was supposed to help with performance -- the drives could use their own hardware to encrypt their contents rather than using the CPU -- without compromising the drive's security. Now it seems the company will no longer trust SSD manufacturers to keep their customers safe by themselves. Here's the exact update Microsoft said it made in KB4516071: "Changes the default setting for BitLocker when encrypting a self-encrypting hard drive. Now, the default is to use software encryption for newly encrypted drives. For existing drives, the type of encryption will not change." People can also choose not to have BitLocker encrypt these drives, too, but the default setting assumes they don't want to take SSD manufacturers at their word.

The NLNet Foundation is a non-profit supporting privacy, security, and the "open internet". Now the open source Libre RISC-V hybrid CPU/GPU is applying for eight additional grants from the NLNet Foundation, according to this update from the project's Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (Slashdot reader #517,947): Details on each Grant Application are on the newly-opened RISC-V Community Forum.

The general idea is to kick RISC-V into a commercially-viable mass-volume high gear by putting forward funding proposals for NEON/SSE-style Video Acceleration to be upstreamed for use by ffmpeg, vlc, mplayer and gstreamer; hardware-assisted Mesa 3D (a port of the RADV Vulkan Driver to RISC-V), and a hardware-accelerated OpenCL port to RISC-V. This all in a "Hybrid" fashion (a la NEON/SSE) as opposed to the "usual" way that 3D and Video is done, which hugely complicate both software drivers and applications debugging.

In addition, the Libre RISC-V SoC itself is applying for grants to do a gcc port supporting its Vectorisation Engine including auto-vectorisation, and, crucially, to do an entirely Libre-licensed ASIC Layout using LIP6.fr coriolis2, working in tandem with Chips4Makers to create a 180nm commercially-viable single-core dual-issue test ASIC.

The process takes approximately 2-3 months for approval. Once accepted, anyone may be the direct (tax-deductible) recipient of NLNet donations, for sub-tasks completed. Worth noting: Puri.sm is sponsoring the project, and, given NLNet's Charitable Status, donations from Corporations (or individuals) are 100% tax-deductible.

After spending about 27 hours with Samsung's new rebooted Galaxy Fold, TechCrunch's Brian Heater noticed something unusual: "a brightly colored, amorphous blob [...] nestled between the lock screen's flapping butterfly wings." While it's nowhere near as severe as the blacked out screens many reviewers of the first wave of units experienced, "it's not a great look, considering that it wasn't dropped on concrete, dunked in water or stepped on," writes Heater. "And the placement smack dab in the center dampens the effect of a 7.3-inch screen." From the report: If I had to guess, I'd say it was pressing the display to close the device that did it. Samsung has since collected the device and will be taking it apart (likely in Korea) to find out what went wrong. We'll update accordingly. We can't say the company didn't warn us. As I noted the other day, Samsung issued a video prior to launch, advising users to "Just use a light touch," B/W the footnote, "Do not apply excessive pressure to it."

There was nothing inside the device while folded. I didn't get it wet or feed it after midnight, and there's no visible damage to the laminate layer, so I can't really say definitively what happened here. And while the screen is certainly still usable, I think I'd probably be irked if I had just paid $2,000 for a handset and had to deal with a large, rainbow colored blob in the exact center of the screen. Part of the white-glove service Samsung is rolling out here is a $149 screen replacement. We got a comment from Samsung on the matter, and it sounds like this particular issue might fall within normal use that wouldn't require an additional fee. Here's what the company has to say on the matter: "We have seen an enthusiastic response to the launch of the Galaxy Fold in several markets over the past few weeks, with thousands of consumers enjoying the unique experience it offers. The Galaxy Fold is a first-of-its-kind device, made with new materials and technologies that allow it to open and close just like a book. We encourage Galaxy Fold owners to read the care instructions included in the box and in the product manual available online. Products used within these guidelines are covered under warranty. If they have any questions, Galaxy Fold owners can consult with Samsung product specialists through the Galaxy Fold Premier Service any time, any day."

Amazon.com unveiled a pair of wearable gadgets equipped with the Alexa digital assistant: glasses and a ring. From a report: The company indicated that the devices aren't meant to be mass-market consumer products and were inventions "left on the cutting-room floor," according to Dave Limp, head of Amazon's devices and services business. The smart glasses look like a normal pair of spectacles and support prescription lenses -- but include microphones for Alexa access. They aren't augmented-reality glasses and lack displays and cameras. At its annual new-device event in Seattle on Wednesday, Amazon also showed off the Echo Loop, a titanium ring with Alexa microphones. Both of the products will be sold by invitation only, in limited quantities, Amazon said. The glasses will cost $180 and the ring will be priced at $130.

Amazon is holding its annual product announcement event today in Seattle, where it just unveiled a new Echo Dot with a digital clock display. From a report: The white, LED display works with several Alexa functions. The display is primarily a clock, but you can also use it to show countdowns for timers and see the outside temperature when you ask Alexa about the weather. As an alarm clock, it includes an automatic snooze option. When your alarm goes off, you'll be able to tap the top and start a nine-minute snooze. The new Echo Dot is available for pre-order starting today for $59. Current Echo Dot will still be available.

dryriver shares a report from Reuters: Nuclear power is losing ground to renewables in terms of both cost and capacity as its reactors are increasingly seen as less economical and slower to reverse carbon emissions, an industry report said. In mid-2019, new wind and solar generators competed efficiently against even existing nuclear power plants in cost terms, and grew generating capacity faster than any other power type, the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) showed. "Stabilizing the climate is urgent, nuclear power is slow," said Mycle Schneider, lead author of the report. "It meets no technical or operational need that low-carbon competitors cannot meet better, cheaper and faster."

The report estimates that since 2009 the average construction time for reactors worldwide was just under 10 years, well above the estimate given by industry body the World Nuclear Association (WNA) of between 5 and 8.5 years. The extra time that nuclear plants take to build has major implications for climate goals, as existing fossil-fueled plants continue to emit CO2 while awaiting substitution. "To protect the climate, we must abate the most carbon at the least cost and in the least time," Schneider said. The WNA said in an emailed statement that studies have shown that nuclear energy has a proven track record in providing new generation faster than other low-carbon options, and added that in many countries nuclear generation provides on average more low-carbon power per year than solar or wind. It said that reactor construction times can be as short as four years when several reactors are built in sequence. According to the report, the cost of generating solar power ranges from $36 to $44 per MWh, while onshore wind power comes in at $29-$56 per MWh. Nuclear energy costs between $112 and $189.

"Over the past decade, the WNISR estimates levelized costs -- which compare the total lifetime cost of building and running a plant to lifetime output -- for utility-scale solar have dropped by 88% and for wind by 69%," reports Reuters. "For nuclear, they have increased by 23%, it said."

The latest phone in the Xiaomi Mi Mix series is the Mi Mix Alpha, a $2,800 smartphone with a "surround screen" that wraps entirely around the device to the point where it meets the camera module on the other side. "The effect is of a phone that's almost completely made of screen, with status icons like network signal and battery charge level displayed on the side," reports The Verge reports. "Pressure-sensitive volume buttons are also shown on the side of the phone. Xiaomi is claiming more than 180 percent screen-to-body ratio, a stat that no longer makes any sense to cite at all." From the report: The Mix Alpha uses Samsung's new 108-megapixel camera sensor, which was co-developed with Xiaomi. As with other recent high-resolution Samsung sensors, pixels are combined into 2x2 squares for better light sensitivity in low light, which in this case will produce 27-megapixel images. There's also no need for a selfie camera -- you just turn the phone around and use the rear portion of the display as a viewfinder for the 108-megapixel shooter.

As for the phone's more traditional specs, there's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor, 5G connectivity, 12GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, 40W wired fast-charging, and a 4,050mAh battery. That last spec would perhaps suggest that Xiaomi doesn't imagine you having the whole screen turned on all the time. Xiaomi describes the Mix Alpha as a "concept smartphone" and isn't going to be mass-producing it any time soon. The phone will go into small-scale production this year and go on sale in December for 19,999 yuan, or about $2,800. The original Mi Mix was also given the "concept" label and released in small quantities, with the Mi Mix 2 following a year later as a more mainstream device.

A team of battery researchers from Halifax, Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University believes it has come up with a recipe that can make electric car batteries last for a million miles. Gizmodo reports: In a paper published in the The Journal of the Electrochemical Society earlier this month, battery researchers describe a new lithium-ion battery that could potentially power an electric vehicle for over one million miles and over 4,000 charging cycles while only losing about 10 percent of its charging capacity (and vehicle range) as it reaches the end of its lifespan. Most drivers upgrade their rides well before the odometer rolls over to one million, but the new battery tech could be especially useful in vehicles that are on the road around the clock like taxis, shuttles, and even delivery trucks.

Since 2016, the Dalhousie team has actually been conducting its research on improving lithium-ion batteries exclusively for Tesla, but this paper divulges exactly how they came up with a recipe for a million-mile electric car battery by optimizing all of the ingredients, which includes artificial graphite, and then improving the nanostructure of the lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide to create a crystal structure that's less likely to crack and degrade performance. According to Wired, who spoke to former researchers who worked in the Dalhousie lab, by publishing the most important details of this research, it provides a new performance benchmark for all of the other R&D labs working on improving battery tech, so, ideally, a million miles of battery life is just the beginning. Wired points out that just days after this paper was published, Tesla was awarded a patent for a new electric vehicle battery featuring nearly the exact same chemical makeup as the ones detailed in the research paper.

"A former Google engineer who worked on the company's infamous military drone project has sounded a warning against the building of killer robots," reports Business Insider.

Long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger quotes their report: Laura Nolan had been working at Google four years when she was recruited to its collaboration with the US Department of Defense, known as Project Maven, in 2017, according to the Guardian. Project Maven was focused on using AI to enhance military drones, building AI systems which would be able to single out enemy targets and distinguish between people and objects. Google canned Project Maven after employee outrage, with thousands of employees signing a petition against the project and about a dozen quitting in protest. Google allowed the contract to lapse in March this year. Nolan herself resigned after she became "increasingly ethically concerned" about the project, she said...

Nolan fears that the next step beyond AI-enabled weapons like drones could be fully autonomous AI weapons. "What you are looking at are possible atrocities and unlawful killings even under laws of warfare, especially if hundreds or thousands of these machines are deployed," she said.... Although no country has yet come forward to say it's working on fully autonomous robot weapons, many are building more and more sophisticated AI to integrate into their militaries. The US navy has a self-piloting warship, capable of spending months at sea with no crew, and Israel boasts of having drones capable of identifying and attacking targets autonomously -- although at the moment they require a human middle-man to give the go-ahead.

Nolan is urging countries to declare an outright ban on autonomous killing robots, similar to conventions around the use of chemical weapons.

In the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Slashdot reader Dan Drollette describes visiting one of North America's biggest experiments in renewable energy, off the coast of Rhode Island.

As the only commercial offshore wind farm in North America, Block Island is "setting the stage for what could be a rapid explosion in the number of commercial offshore windmills on the entire East Coast of the United States, assuming they leap the latest set of ever-changing legal hurdles set by fossil-fuel friendly regulators in Washington, DC." The goal of the Block Island test wind farm -- which started construction in the summer of 2015 and started generating some power in December 2016 -- is to see if it is technologically, environmentally, and scientifically possible to transfer offshore wind power technology from Europe to North America... This five-turbine, 30-megawatt endeavor has been effectively acting as a multi-year, real-world experiment in offshore wind power for the United States, paving the way for offshore wind farms on the northeast coast and the mid-Atlantic that could each be as much as 600 times the size of this test site, with hundreds of turbines generating electricity for hundreds of thousands of homes from just one full-scale, industrial-sized wind farm. There are more than a dozen large offshore "wind lease areas" suitable for wind farms currently up for bid from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, stretching from Massachusetts to North Carolina. Massachusetts alone is soliciting contracts for 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind development (half have now been sold), which is more than 50 times the size of this pilot project off of Block Island.... Once it is built and running, the Massachusetts project off Martha's Vineyard alone will provide enough energy to power at least 230,000 households, or about a third of the state's residential energy demand.

Other states are working on a similar gargantuan scale. All told, there are 28 offshore wind projects in the works on the East Coast, with a total capacity of 24 gigawatts, or 24,000 megawatts. To give a sense of the massive size of the generating power of the wind farms now in the works, the first commercial civilian nuclear reactor in the United States -- Massachusetts' Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station, now decommissioned -- generated just 185 megawatts at its peak. But after decades of false starts and tangled litigation, a sea change appears to be occurring for offshore wind in the United States, as this country races to catch up with Northern Europe, where this renewable energy source has become increasingly mainstream and increasingly cheap... And these offshore wind projects could have a big impact on the environment. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that the newly contracted wind farms would offset carbon emissions equivalent to removing about 270,000 cars from the road. They could play a key role in reducing the region's climate change footprint, while allowing the New England economy to grow...

Consequently, this handful of windmills in one test plot have been closely watched, studied, and debated, from multiple points of view, by many different "stakeholders," as the parlance goes -- including Wall Street analysts, investment firms, engineers, economists, sociologists, fisheries experts, environmental activists, historic preservationists, ornithologists, marine mammal biologists, Native American tribes, scallopers, long-liners, oystermen, sport fisherman, real estate investors, the tourism industry, and homeowners. And, of course, lawyers. Many, many lawyers...
The article notes that often windmill power companies "can piggyback on existing infrastructure, in the form of the high-tension power lines built for decommissioned nuclear plants or retired coal-fired plants such as the 1,500 megawatt Brayton Point Power Station on the mainland -- the last coal-burning plant in Massachusetts, which was shut down in May 2017..."

After talking to several locals, he concludes that "If there is a common thread to the comments, it is that the windmills are quiet and distant, and that with a steady and predictable source of power, islanders no longer have to worry about blackouts or brownouts... If nothing else, wind had turned out to be more reliable than ferrying barrels of diesel fuel to a generator located on an island 13 miles out to sea."

Initial results from NASA's InSight lander suggest that Mars' magnetic field wobbles in inexplicable ways at night, hinting that the red planet may host a global reservoir of liquid water deep below the surface. National Geographic reports: In addition to the odd magnetic pulsations, the lander's data show that the Martian crust is far more powerfully magnetic than scientists expected. What's more, the lander has picked up on a very peculiar electrically conductive layer, about 2.5 miles thick, deep beneath the planet's surface. It's far too early to say with any certainty, but there is a chance that this layer could represent a global reservoir of liquid water.

On Earth, groundwater is a hidden sea locked up in sand, soil, and rocks. If something similar is found on Mars, then "we shouldn't be surprised," says Jani Radebaugh, a planetary scientist at Brigham Young University who was not involved with the work. But if these results bear out, a liquid region at this scale on modern Mars has enormous implications for the potential for life, past or present. So far, none of these data have been through peer review, and details about the initial findings and interpretations will undoubtedly be tweaked over time. Still, the revelations provide a stunning showcase for InSight, a robot that has the potential to revolutionize our comprehension of Mars and other rocky worlds across the galaxy.

MojoKid writes: Lakka with RetroArch is one of the most comprehensive open-source retro-gaming console front ends available, with support for a wide array of single-board computers and multiple operating systems. Although the more powerful Raspberry Pi 4 was released months ago, the developers of Lakka had a number of bugs to contend with that prevented an official stable release, until yesterday. Lakka 2.3 (with RetroArch 1.7.8) is available now though, and it appears to leverage the additional horsepower of the Pi 4 quite well. It's even able to play some of the more demanding Sega Dreamcast and Saturn games -- among many other retro-consoles, like the Atari 2600, SuperNES, and many others. In addition to the Pi 4, this latest Lakka release also adds support for the ROCKPro64 and incorporates a wide range of bug fixes and feature enhancements.

New submitter Bioblaze shares a report from CNET: Google has reportedly built a quantum computer more powerful than the world's top supercomputers. A Google research paper was temporarily posted online this week, the Financial Times reported Friday, and said the quantum computer's processor allowed a calculation to be performed in just over 3 minutes. That calculation would take 10,000 years on IBM's Summit, the world's most powerful commercial computer, Google reportedly said. Google researchers are throwing around the term "quantum supremacy" as a result, the FT said, because their computer can solve tasks that can't otherwise be solved. "To our knowledge, this experiment marks the first computation that can only be performed on a quantum processor," the research paper reportedly said.

Wave723 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum: Amid the sand dunes of the western Sahara, workers are putting the finishing touches on one of the world's largest solar installations. There, as many as 7.2 million photovoltaic panels will make up Benban Solar Park -- a renewable energy project so massive, it will be visible from space. The 1.8-gigawatt installation is the first utility-scale PV plant in Egypt, a nation blessed with some of the best solar resources on the planet. The ambitious project is part of Egypt's efforts to increase its generation capacity and incorporate more renewable sources into the mix.

Once operational, Benban Solar Park will avoid two million tons of CO2 emissions per year [PDF] compared with what's belched into the air by a thermal power station generating the same amount of electricity. That difference is roughly equivalent to half the annual emissions produced by one coal-fired power plant. To create the park, Egypt's government selected a remote desert site with high solar radiation and divided it into 41 plots of varying sizes. It assigned those plots to roughly 30 developers that expressed interest in the project, and the government promised to pay a competitive price (through financial incentives called feed-in tariffs [PDF]) for all power produced at Benban for 25 years.