This thermal solar project when completed in 2011 it will be the largest solar project in the world, generating 553 megawatts of power for Pacific Gas & Electric in the Mojave Desert in California. The plant is being built by Israeli company, Solel Solar Systems of Beit Shemes, Israel, a successor company to the people that built the nine thermal solar plants in the Mojave Desert, that have operated over the past 20 years and are currently generating 354 MW of electricity.
Thermal solar is currently the lowest cost technology for producing solar power and it is good to see a large project like this get the go ahead.
According to their website Solel is building an $800 million 150 MW project in Spain and has recently upgraded a 100 MW project in California for FPL Energy. They have been active in supplying smaller solar power plants and components for them, but this is the first megaproject that they have landed.
Their current technology is more than 20% more efficient than the original design due to improvements in the design of the solar trough and the receiver tube.
Neither Solel or P G & E have revealed any costs for the project but an AP article on PR Inside estimated that The Mojave Solar Park to cost $2 billion. A NYT article said that people close to both companies put the cost of electricity from the plant at slightly more than 10 cents a kilowatt-hour (The Solel website says "the cost of solar thermal produced energy can be close to 12 cents (US) per k/Wh. However, many economists and investors predict that this price will continuously drop over the next ten years with increased installed capacity, to 6 cents per kW/h, as a result of technological improvements, economies of scale and volume production.")
A few paragraphs from the P G & E press release further describe the project:
Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced July 25 that it has entered into a landmark renewable energy agreement with Solel-MSP-1 to purchase renewable energy from the Mojave Solar Park, to be constructed in California’s Mojave Desert. The project will deliver 553 megawatts of solar power, the equivalent of powering 400,000 homes, to PG&E’s customers in northern and central California. The Mojave Solar Park project is now the world’s largest single solar commitment.
Over the past 20 years, the technology has powered nine operating solar power plants in the Mojave Desert and is currently generating 354 MW of annual electricity. When fully operational in 2011, the Mojave Solar Park plant will cover up to 6,000 acres, or nine square miles in the Mojave Desert. The project will rely on 1.2 million mirrors and 317 miles of vacuum tubing to capture the desert sun’s heat.
Solel Solar Systems of Israel, the world’s largest solar thermal company, is the parent company of Solel-MSP-1 LLC. Solel’s leading technology utilizes parabolic mirrors to concentrate solar energy onto its patented UVAC 2008 solar thermal receivers. The receivers contain a fluid that is heated and circulated, and the heat is released to generate steam. The steam powers a turbine to produce electricity, which can be delivered to a utility’s electric grid. The electricity generated by Mojave Solar Park will use some of the transmission infrastructure originally built for the now dormant coal-fired Mojave Generation Station to deliver the power to PG&E’s customers.
See earlier post for detailed description of how solar troughs operate and browse the Solar-Thermal category for more posts on the subject.
>>They are, however, competitive with >>the 'renewable' alternatives in GHG >>emission, per unit of produced power
> That means you were comparing ‘renewable’ > vs. nuclear.
Indeed. And the CO2 emissions from both are small. The absolute difference is negligible. To make this quantitative, consider the value of the difference, per KwH, if CO2 emissions are valued at (say) $100/tonne. This is in contrast to fossil fuel-fired electricity generation, where the effect of that CO2 tax would be large.
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