New solar energy technology comes on line in Hawaii
Solar energy through solar-thermal technology is not new, but it has not been adopted on a micro scale until now.
Sopogy, the designer of a concentrating solar power system called MicroCSP, announced this week that it has built the world’s first small-scale solar-thermal plant on the Hawaiian island of Kona.
Sopogy’s technology is similar to that used in massive solar-thermal installations that occupy thousands of acres of land. Those systems use mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays on a central tower that contains fluid; the fluid is heated and steam can be generated to spin a turbine that generates electricity. But the MicroCSP units are small and modular; they circulate fluid through a receiver in the middle of the mirror.
The new plant on Kona occupies just 3.8 acres, Sopogy says. Its 1,000 MicroCSP units can generate 2 megawatts of electricity, and a buffer system allows thermal energy to be generated even in cloudy weather.
The 2-megawatt facility was built at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii, a state-run research and education center on Kona’s west coast. The lab’s tenants study ocean-based and renewable energy technologies.
Solar mecca
Plans to build three large energy plants on the Carrizo Plain could turn SLO County into a nationwide pioneer — but the proposals aren’t without critics, who say the industrial uses would cause irreparable harm to the area’s environment and wildlife
By David Sneed, sanluisobispo.com
San Luis Obispo County could become the nation’s leader in solar energy if three large-scale commercial solar plants are approved to start operating near the Carrizo Plain National Monument.
Two are photovoltaic plants that use solar panels to convert sunlight into electricity. According to the Solar Energy Industry Association, they would be the two largest photovoltaic systems in the world.
The third would also be the world’s largest of its kind: a solar thermal plant that uses the sun’s heat to drive electrical steam generators.
The plants could be online as early as 2013. Together, they would produce 977 megawatts of power, enough electricity to serve more than 100,000 homes. Not only are the plants large, they are also on track to be some of the first to come online, said Sue Kateley, executive director of the California chapter of the Solar Energy Industry Association.
“San Luis Obispo County could be the first to see the actual shovels in the ground,” she said.
Several factors are driving this unprecedented growth of solar power.
One is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ambitious goal of having 33 percent of the state’s power come from renewable sources by 2020. State and federal tax breaks also encourage the quick development of renewable energy sources.
All three plants are still in the planning phase with state and county officials processing construction applications, but little seems to stand in the way of their eventual approval. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has signed contracts to purchase all the power they will produce.
Click link above for complete article.
eSolar unveils new solar energy plant
By Danny Vo, Coolerplanet.com
The solar energy industry took a step forward this week as eSolar unveiled a new solar thermal tower in California.
According to the company, its 5-megawatt Sierra SunTower plant is currently the only one of its kind in the country. The facility will be able to power at least 4,000 California homes through Southern California Electric.
“Sierra is just the beginning. Soon eSolar technology will be deployed worldwide to provide clean, affordable energy to hundreds of thousands of homes,” said eSolar CEO Bill Gross.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger also praised the “historic plant opening” that had been helped along by the state’s solar-friendly policies.
The plant will use thousands of mirrors to focus sunlight onto a tower containing fluid that is heated to power turbines. According to eSolar, the project was completed in under a year and created 300 construction jobs while it was in development.
A number of other utility-scale solar energy plants are expected to go online early in the next decade, especially in various parts of the Southwest.
Nobel laureate: Wind is not the future
By Erik Palm, CNET.com
While the Obama administration has expressed increasing hopes that wind power will play a key role in America’s future energy system, one of the world’s leading scientists is ruling out the technology.
Jack Steinberger, the 1968 Nobel Prize winner in physics and director of CERN’s particle-physics laboratory, spoke at a conference of Nobel laureates at the 350-year-old Royal Society in London last week.
His conclusion: “Wind is not the future,” according to the London Times.
Steinberger says Europe should cancel its big wind plans and that solar energy is the future.
Historical resources in the energy-hungry world are being depleted, he said, predicting that fossil fuels, coal, and oil will be gone in 60 years. But the solution, he asserted, is not wind power.
The reason? Wind power still requires backup power when the wind isn’t blowing, and that decreases its contribution to emissions reductions.
On the other hand, solar thermal power–where collectors concentrate sunlight using mirrors and lenses to produce electric power and heat–is already economical and can handle the storage problem, he said. The heat produced can be stored, enabling solar thermal plants to produce electricity during hours without sunlight.
Steinberger now wants funding for a big pilot project.
The idea is to link solar thermal power from Northern Africa to Europe via high-voltage undersea cables. The proposed 3- to 3.5-gigawatt power plant would cost an estimated $32 billion to build. Steinberger believes that 80 percent of Europe’s energy needs could be met by solar thermal power plants in the Sahara by 2050.
In the U.S., which has the world’s largest installed base of wind power, the Obama administration has pinned high hopes on wind, with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently expressing hope that wind power could replace coal.
Meanwhile, the 1976 Nobel Prize winner in physics, professor Burton Richter of Stanford University, agreed that solar energy is a promising new technology, but speaking at the Royal society conference, did not want to rule out wind as a future energy source.
Solar energy a possibility in Southlake
By Chrisitina Rowland, Staff writer, SCNTX.com
The city of Southlake currently has no ordinance on the books concerning solar energy systems. They are prohibited in Southlake.
That could soon be changing, however. There was a citywide SPIN meeting Monday night to inform the public about a proposed ordinance that will go before planning and zoning April 9.
Daniel Cortez, a member of the city planning department, gave Monday’s presentation and answered questions for citizens.
He said the interest in solar energy came about last summer when some residents inquired with the city about it. They decided not to move forward, but it made the city begin to weigh such items for the future.
Although there is currently no one asking the city about permits for solar energy systems, the city is trying to be proactive and put an ordinance in place.
The new ordinance would address both solar PV systems and solar thermal systems. The solar PV systems generate solar energy for a home, while a thermal system heats home water.
According to the PowerPoint presentation, a solar thermal system in Texas can generate up to 90 percent of annual water heating needs.
The initial cost of either system can be expensive, but the federal government does offer some assistance for those wanting to switch to solar energy. The government will cover 30 percent of the cost of the system. In Texas, property taxes will not be raised if the system increases your property value. In addition, Oncor offers customer rebates of up to $2.46 per installed watt of system size for those who want to use solar power.
There are also similar incentive programs for commercial businesses wanting to be greener.
For those residents wanting to use solar energy, they would have to apply for a specific use permit and meet certain requirements.
For residential systems mounted on the ground, they can not exceed a height of 14 feet and must be 10 feet from any property line or building. For roof mounted systems, the ordinance notes it cannot extend beyond the thickness of the panel itself and an addition of up to six inches from the roof.
For commercial use, the units must all be mounted on the roof and must “not extend beyond the lowest point of the parapet wall and shall be installed at the same angle as the roof.”
For both residential and commercial use, the ordinance would require that the system is not to impact any neighboring properties or public right-of-way from nuisance glare. The ordinance also states the solar energy system cannot be installed on a lot until a building permit has been issued or the building is built.
Some residents at the meeting had a problem with this, noting that if they own a lot adjacent to their home with no building on it they could not use that lot to house a solar energy farm.
Public input was gathered at the meeting and will be presented to both planning and zoning and city council as the ordinance moves forward. No changes will come out of Monday’s meeting and it will be presented in the same form to planning and zoning as it was to the public on Monday night.
Solar Energy Industry Group Reports US Solar Market Hit Record Growth In 2008, Despite Economic Crisis
From SEIA.org
Smart federal policies needed to maintain growth and meet President Obama’s renewable energy goals
WASHINGTON– Today, the Solar Energy Industries Association released its 2008 U.S. Solar Industry Year in Review, highlighting a third year of record growth. The report notes that 1,265 megawatts (MW) of solar power of all types were installed in 2008, bringing total U.S. solar power capacity up 17 percent to 8,775 MW. The 2008 figure included 342 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV), 139 MWTh (thermal equivalent) of solar water heating, 762 MWTh of pool heating and an estimated 21 MW of solar space heating and cooling.
“Despite severe economic pressures in the United States, demand for solar energy grew tremendously in 2008,” said Rhone Resch, president and CEO of SEIA. “Increasingly, solar energy has proven to be an economic engine for this country, creating thousands of jobs, unleashing billions in investment dollars and building new factories from New Hampshire to Michigan to Oregon.”
Click link above for complete article.
Biggest Solar Deal Ever Announced — We’re Talking Gigawatts
By Alexis Madrigal, blog.wired.com
(Credit: BrightSource Energy)
The largest series of solar installations in history, more than 1,300 megawatts, is planned for the desert outside Los Angeles, according to a new deal between the utility Southern California Edison and solar power plant maker, BrightSource.
The momentous deal will deliver more electricity than even the largest nuclear plant, spread out among seven facilities, the first of which will start up in 2013. When fully operational, the companies say the facility will provide enough electricity to power 845,000 homes — more than exist in San Francisco — though estimates like that are notoriously squirrely.
The technology isn’t the familiar photovoltaics — the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity — but solar thermal power, which concentrates the sun’s rays to create steam in a boiler and spin a turbine.
“We do see solar as the large untapped resource, particularly in Southern California,” said Stuart Hemphill, vice president of renewable energy and power at Southern California Edison. “It’s barely tapped and we’re eager to see it expand in our portfolio.”
BrightSource is the reincarnation of Luz International, which built the only currently operating solar thermal facility during the 1980s in the Mojave Desert. After natural gas and energy prices plunged in 1985, that operation became unprofitable. The group’s engineers and founders moved the business to Israel, where they continued to work on their technology.
The new deal breaks the company’s own record for the largest ever solar deal. The new installations, when completed, will produce 3.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. Previously, they’d cut a deal to deliver 900 megawatts of power to the Northern California utility, PG&E.
“Coupled with our earlier partnership with PG&E, this agreement proves that the energy industry recognizes the important role that solar thermal will play in the energy future,” John Woolard, CEO of BrightSource, said in a press conference with reporters.
While Brightsource is a leader in the field, a variety of other companies compete in the solar thermal space. Google.org and other investors have backed eSolar’s with $130 million funding. Abu Dhabi’s clean-tech fund, Masdar, has funded a $1.2 billion solar thermal company called Torresol. Yet another player, Abengoa, recently signed a $4 billion deal with Arizona Public Utilities, and Stirling Energy Systems, a company that has adapted the Stirling Engine, a 200-year-old invention, for concentrated solar power, even pulled in a $100 million investment.
The first of the seven installations will be in Ivanpah, California and will be rated at 100 megawatts of peak power. The companies expect it to produce 286,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year. When all the installations are finished, they’ll stretch over 10,500 acres of land.
Southern California Edison’s Hemphill said that the new plants would provide a valuable hedge against volatile natural gas prices, noting that his company had seen natural gas prices as low as $4 per thousand million cubic feet (a standard industry measure) and as high as $16. Given the variability of natural gas pricing, Hemphill said that his company did not expect the solar thermal electricity to exceed the market cost of electricity in California.
The 1980s-era solar thermal plants use the oldest solar thermal technology around, known as a parabolic trough. Mirrors shaped like a paper-towel roll cut in half concentrate the sun’s rays on a liquid. That heat can be transformed into various types of energy. The Luz fields made electricity, but Frank Shuman built a plant based on this principle to pump water in Egypt in the first decade of the 20th century.
The new design sounds more exciting. Mirrors that track the sun — heliostats — sit in a massive field around a tower with a boiler. All those mirrors concentrate the sun’s heat on the boiler, which makes steam and drives a turbine.
Solar thermal is seen as a promising source of energy for city-scale power because it works on very well established principles. Photovoltaics have come down in price — and thin-film plastic solar cells could get even cheaper — but the conversion of sunlight to electricity remains a novel source of energy. The first working cells were only built half a century ago, and they were truly something new in the world.
Steam-driven turbines, on the other hand, make almost 90 percent of the world’s electricity and their ancestry stretches back to the start of the Industrial Revolution. Solar thermal engineers, then, can use the knowledge gained from more than a century of tinkering at coal, natural gas, and nuclear fission plants.
Alternative-Alternative Energies: What’s Next?
From Technewsworld.com
Gone are the days when “fringe technologies” meant things like solar energy and wind power.
Those and other alternative energy approaches have all gone mainstream, to one degree or another, and they’re gaining more steam each year.
However, the fringe is still out there, and so-called alternative-alternative energy technologies are in development.
Some are closer to application than others; some depend on geographical factors for practical use.
“We start paying attention once they reach the point of showing some promise,” Gartner (NYSE: IT) More about Gartner analyst Zarko Sumic told TechNewsWorld. ”
Emerging energy technology is now known as “operational technology,” said Sumic, who works with Gartner’s energy and technology advisory services, a group that explores the potential effects of emerging energy technologies on the IT sector.
“All the renewables, and climate and energy independence, have received significant attention,” Sumic said.
Thermal solar energy is getting a lot of research time, he noted. “There are different formats of it. It uses concentrated solar energy in order to create steam and ultimately generate electricity through traditional movement of the steam and heat medium.”
Thermal solar energy is probably generating enough attention to be moving away from the category of “fringe” technology, said Sumic. “It’s kind of coming,” he said.
So-called fringe technologies have taken hold in bastions of early technology adoption like California, said Charles King, principal with Pund-IT More about Pund-IT.
“Energy on the fringe is a fairly common topic here in California,” he told TechNewsWorld. “I’d include everything from do-it-yourself projects [such as] home solar and wind turbine energy production [and] electrical car kits to cutting-edge research in areas such as thin-film solar, next-gen batteries, cellulosic ethanol, algal fuel, ocean/tidal energy and natural gas conversion.
Thin film solar has gotten quite a bit of attention — and research dollars, King said, “but is still some ways out. On the plus side, it’s far cheaper and, literally, more flexible than traditional silicon-based solar power technologies. On the down side, it currently costs way more and is significantly less efficient. Lots of work being done here.”
Tidal Power
There’s also a set of tidal-power technologies, Gartner’s Sumic said.
“They have been used for a number of years in river estuaries and capturing the water in high tide and releasing it through hydro turbines,” he noted.
“Now, there are some different metals being explored to use some of the latest research in looking at using slow-moving water,” Sumic continued. “There is some research that is looking at using the different levels of waters — peaks and lows — and using that to push the water through the turbines.”
Indirectly, it can be categorized as an extension of wind power, through intermediaries, he added.
A third category of ocean energy involves trying to take advantage of the turbine energy in deep water, Sumic said.
“It’s a whole class of oceanic, or water-related, technology: the tidal, veil and the thermal,” he said.
Tidal energy, derived from turbines driven by the motion of the tides or river or ocean currents, shows “incredible” potential, commented Pund-IT’s King.
“A company called Verdant Power has been running a research project on the East River since 2006,” he said, “and SeaGen, in Northern Ireland — the first commercial unit installed anywhere — began generating at full power last month.”
Water power presents a number of options, noted Gartner’s Sumic. “We have that reversible hydro power plant: You can pump water back in the reservoir and reverse the flow during the peak.”
However, hydro power is limited by geography, observed Rob Enderle, principal with the Enderle Group More about Enderle Group.
“You’ve got to have a stream in close proximity to make that work,” he said.
Hydrogen power also belongs more in the realm of potential than practical energy sources, said Gartner’s Sumic, noting that the category has received attention primarily due to its possible use as an automotive fuel.
“To have an infrastructure Linux MPS Pro Focus on Your Business — Not Your IT Infrastructure. — to find a way to store and produce it effectively — is where a lot of research is,” he said.
Down Side of Geothermal?
Geothermal energy isn’t practical, at least at the moment, said Enderle.
“Doing an earth-core tap will cost a million bucks,” he told TechNewsWorld.
Gas sources are also questionable and limited to certain areas, Enderle pointed out, although “the methane stuff is being considered for farms because you’ve got a lot of it.”
Natural gas conversion uses catalytic processes to convert carbon-based materials — including coal and feed stocks — into pipeline-quality natural gas, noted Pund-IT’s King.
“T. Boone Pickens is pressing hard in this area,” he said, “and bankrolled an initiative in California last November to promote the use of natural gas in automobiles. Converting cars to use natural gas is fairly simple and the technologies are readily available, but many consumers are reluctant to drive the Detroit equivalent of the Hindenburg.”
Technologies that help to use energy more efficiently, rather than power generation, are the focus of Sumic’s group at Gartner.
“The one that is definitely critical or has a huge promise is super conductivity — high temperature,” he said. “It’s not used as a means to generate; it’s a technology that can reduce losses. So, indirectly, it increases the availability of the energy.”
There also are storage technologies that aren’t used directly to generate power but can be used predictably with wind and solar and renewables, Sumic said.
“Some technologies are lithium batteries, where there’s a lot of research because of electric vehicles,” he said. “There’s a whole set of other storage technologies — some of them using magnetic fields. Some are using traditional capacitors. Some flywheels and things like that.”
Some of those fringe technologies have made more progress toward practical use than others, noted Sumic.
“High-temperature superconductivity has been around for a number of years but hasn’t moved from the very early stage,” he said. “[Regarding hydrogen], there’s a lot of technology there, but it faces challenges in how to produce economically efficient hydrogen. At this point, you spend more energy than you get.”
Storage also represents a significant hurdle that “research hasn’t passed,” he said.
Still, next-generation batteries are showing promise, maintained Pund-IT’s King.
“It’s another area of great focus — especially in Asia — that will eventually provide power storage for everything from fuel cells for mobile computers and cell phones to next-generation lithium ion batteries for electric autos,” King said. “There’s some interesting stuff being done, but viable commercial products are some years away.”
Even with renewable energy sources, storage remains an issue, Sumic emphasized, and it has attracted a “significant amount of investment. … “The reason for that in the utility industry is because of the increased percentage of renewables. You need to find a way to couple them with storage technology. You store it and release it when it’s needed.”
Biofuels Progress
On the biofuels front, there is plenty of research into cellulosic ethanol as a less labor- or chemically intensive energy source than corn- and grain-based ethanol, King said.
“Switch grass is one of the sources most people are discussing here, but ethanol can also be brewed with everything from wood chips to corn stalks and leaves,” he explained. “It’s interesting technology that is more environmentally friendly than corn ethanol, but volume production is a long way down the road.”
Alternative-Alternative Energies: What’s Next?
Algal fuel or algae-based biofuel holds “great promise,” due to its energy potential,” King said, adding that algae contains up to 30 times more fuel than equivalent amounts of other biofuel sources and can be grown almost anywhere.
Still, he acknowledged, “for now, it’s far too expensive to produce commercially.”
Where all the research goes depends largely on funding. The U.S. government spends less in inflation-adjusted dollars on alternative-energy research than it did in the 1970s, particularly in the area of geothermal technology.
“While it is true that we have structural — tax and regulatory — benefits for renewal and nonpolluting energy sources, that is not the same as research dollars,” Jonah Stein, founder of ItsTheROI.com, told TechNewsWorld.
There is more to discover on the edges, he noted.
“I suppose the fringe elements are things like high altitude wind generation, tide- and wave-based ocean generation, and biological solar capture,” said Stein.
“Really fringe? How about passive nuclear energy — [a] technology that converts radiation from nuclear waste into electricity from micro-generation, instead of building highly complex and potentially disastrous reactors that require the nuclear chain reaction to be on the borderline of going critical? Given the half-life of some of these radiation sources,” he speculated, “we could build 10,000-year generators.”
Solar thermal comes out of the shadows
By Douglas Fischer, Daily Climate
There is energy to be harvested in deserts of Southern California, Arizona, Spain and Africa: Sunlight focused so intensely it can melt salt, vaporize water and run air conditioners from Phoenix to Seville long after the sun has set.
This is concentrating solar power, and it represents the best hope for utility-scale power from renewable energy and the surest way to get energy-sucking Sun Belt cities off carbon.
It’s also a technology you’ve likely never heard of, given the attention and credits lavished on rooftop photovoltaic kits.
Concentrating solar power, or solar thermal, is a world apart from photovoltaic solar, the world’s fastest-growing energy technology. Rather than use silicon-based panels to chemically convert sunlight to electricity, solar thermal uses mirrors to focus the sun’s rays on pipes carrying oil or other heat-absorbing fluid. Sunlight heats the oil to 500° C or more; hot oil flashes water to steam; steam spins a turbine; the turbine makes juice.
Simple? That’s the attraction.
This is big-time electricity. Utilities have inked power purchase agreements for almost 5,000 megawatts from developers building solar thermal plants. Sixty plants worldwide are on the drawing board or being built. The price of power from these plants is competitive with the gas-fired peaker plants keeping the electric grid afloat as demand skyrockets on hot afternoons.
And hot afternoons are precisely when solar thermal plants do their best work.
“This is just so obvious it’s going to be huge,” said Terry Collins, Thomas Lord Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon and director of the university’s Institute for Green Science. “It’s going to completely change the country.”
There are caveats, however.
Wind is much further ahead, in both price and technology.
Within the solar family, solar thermal remains the laggard. The United States has 418 megawatts of installed solar thermal capacity, compared to 750 megawatts of PV and the thermal equivalent of 2,250 megawatts of solar water heating systems, according to the association. All that together equals less than one percent of the nation’s energy mix.
The recent extension of Congress’ solar tax credit rid the domestic market of a lot of anxiety and promises to spur growth, said Monique Hanis, spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association. But the United States will be playing catch-up: Germany is installing eight times the solar capacity as the United States.
The U.S. electric grid doesn’t connect the best solar spots – in the unpopulated Southwest deserts – with the nation’s cities. Partly because of that, many utilities are turning first to multiple rooftop-mounted PV panels to create distributed power networks. Southern California Edison, which in August inked a contract for 900 megawatts of wind power, plans to install 3.5 million rooftop PV systems in urban areas over the next five years, generating 250 megawatts of juice.
The promise of solar thermal is, so far, just that: Promise. Beyond a 64 megawatt power plant in Nevada, the United States hasn’t build a major solar thermal plant since 1978.
Yet there are signs solar thermal is about to claim its moment in the sun.
First, prices are converging. A modern solar thermal plant produces power in the 12- to 18-cents-per-kilowatt-hour range. By comparison a photovoltaic system generates juice for about 40 cents a kilowatt-hour, a baseload coal plant churns out power for three to five cents per kilowatt-hour, and wind enjoys a 2.1 cent tax credit on every kilowatt-hour produced, bringing it into coal’s upper range. Natural gas runs between 12 and 20 cents a kilowatt-hour.
But solar won’t ever be baseload, utilities say – what if it rains for a week? – and wind, though cheap, is often most plentiful at night when demand is lowest.
That leaves natural gas, which, conveniently enough, is the fossil fuel solar thermal is best suited to replace. Gas-fired peaker plants are designed to quickly bring juice online as demand spikes throughout the day.
“You essentially take the pressure off the grid system,” said Collins, the Carnegie Mellon professor. “We already have much more expensive peak-time electricity…. And that’s smack in the middle of when these things are doing their best work.”
There’s also solar thermal’s trump card: Storage.
The ability to store power for later use is a holy grail of sorts for renewable energy developers. Wind and photovoltaic plants force utilities to use the power on the spot or dump the load. Various batteries and capacitors are in the works for those technologies, but none so far match the smooth efficiency or low cost of solar thermal’s ability to hoard sunlight.
A plant designed with storage can shunt the hot oil from the mirrors to a giant insulated heat sink – a vat of molten sand, say, or a chunk of concrete or pig iron. Then after the sun sets but while demand remains high, that heat can be tapped to generate steam.
Or if a cloud rolls over a plant’s mirrors, or an afternoon thunderstorm stalls overhead, hundreds of megawatts of juice won’t suddenly drop off the grid. Utility operators can simply tap the tank.
“We’ve sort of stumbled on this thing with storage,” said Tom R. Mancini, program manager for concentrating solar power technologies at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. “The round-trip efficiency is 90 percent…. Solar thermal is made for this.”
Arizona Public Service is building a plant that can keep the sun’s power for six hours past sunset, allowing managers to meet evening demand spikes with midafternoon sun. A utility in Spain hopes to develop a plant that can keep heat for seven. Engineers figure 14 hours or more is feasible.
See-sawing fuel prices and a carbon tax’s uncertainties further stack the deck in solar’s favor, said Steven Gotfried, renewable energies spokesman for Arizona Public Service. “You take those two dynamics, and then you start to look at the fact it has storage capacity, and you see that not only is (concentrating solar power) a clean, renewable source of energy – it makes smart business sense,” he said.
The realization that all this carbon-neutral renewable energy can be harvested from the desert has sparked a bit of a global rush:
Nevada has a 64 megawatt plant up and running; Arizona is building a 280 megawatt plant; in California, Ausra Inc. opened a 5 megawatt test plant in Bakersfield this fall, while the Bay Area’s Pacific Gas & Electric Co. this summer inked five contracts for 900 megawatts worth of solar thermal.
Israel is eying a 250 MW plant, and Seville, in Spain, hopes to have 300 MW of solar thermal powering all 180,000 of its homes by 2015.
All told some 60 plants are either under construction or under contract worldwide – with most in either Spain or the United States – for a total capacity just north of 5,700 megawatts.
“We’re going to see a lot more of these,” said Hanis, the solar association spokeswoman.
Concentrating solar thermal won’t work everywhere – plants need clear skies and dry air, which explains why Germany, with the cloud cover of Alaska, is pushing photovoltaic panels instead of solar thermal.
That said, the sun drops an enormous abundance of untapped energy daily into deserts worldwide. “You can do long-line, direct-current cables from North Africa to Europe,” said Reid Detchon, director of the Energy Future Coalition. “It’s certainly cheaper than doing PV in Germany.”
“Whether it’s going to be the solution 30 years from now, I’m much less confident,” he added. “But it’s a good next step.”
