For the third time in a week, the federal government on Monday threw its financial support behind a Bay Area company planning to build big solar power plants in California.
Solar Trust of America, based in Oakland, won a $2.1 billion conditional loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy to build two solar thermal plants near the desert town of Blythe in Riverside County.
The two plants represent the first phase of a larger project that could one day be the world’s largest solar array, generating up to 1,000 megawatts of electricity and powering 300,000 homes.
The award is the department’s biggest yet for a solar project. Last week, the department announced a $1.2 billion conditional loan guarantee for SunPower Corp. of San Jose and finalized terms for a $1.6 billion loan guarantee for Oakland’s BrightSource Energy Inc.
Like Solar Trust, both BrightSource and SunPower are developing solar plants that will help California reach its goal of getting one-third of its electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2020. The loan guarantees will help the companies line up private financing for their projects.
They will also boost the development of America’s renewable power industry, a key goal of the Obama administration.
“We can either sit on the sidelines and watch the competition pass us by, or we can get in the race and play to win,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, announcing the Solar Trust agreement Monday.
Solar Trust is the American joint venture of two German companies, Solar Millennium AG and Ferrostaal Inc. Despite Solar Trust’s European pedigree, the company estimates that its Blythe Solar Power Project will generate 7,500 jobs across the United States, both in building the power plant and supplying its parts and materials.
“With this step by the DOE, the U.S. will have seriously entered the modern version of the space race of the 1960s, the solar race of today,” said Uwe Schmidt, Solar Trust’s chief executive officer.
Chevron Energy Solutions, a division of the San Ramon oil giant, helped develop the Blythe project but will not oversee construction.
The Blythe project’s first phase, estimated to cost $2.8 billion, will consist of two solar-thermal power plants producing up to 242 megawatts apiece. Preliminary construction began late last year.
The plants will use mirrors, shaped into troughs, to concentrate sunlight on tubes filled with a heat-conducting oil. The tubes will transfer that heat to water, creating steam, turning turbines and generating electricity.
A handful of similar plants have operated in Southern California for decades. But starting in 2006, a state law that ordered California’s utility companies to get 20 percent of their power from renewable sources triggered a race to build more.
The race continues. Gov. Jerry Brown last week signed legislation requiring California utilities to increase their use of renewable power to 33 percent by the end of 2020. Brown has even talked about shooting for 40 percent, although he has not yet discussed a timetable for it. He thanked Chu on Monday for helping the state reach its goal.
“We really appreciate the confidence and the investment,” Brown said, on a conference call with Chu and Schmidt. “We’ve got a lot of sun to harness, and we need the technology and the capital and the regulatory encouragement.”
While most environmental groups support the construction of large-scale solar plants, some have questioned the projects’ potential impact on the desert’s fragile ecosystem. Solar Trust and its construction subsidiary – Solar Millennium LLC – had to relocate four desert tortoises from the project site before beginning work last year.
It is unfortunate that there is no information concerning construction details. for example, just how much of mother earth is covered by this power plant. Describe the source of electricity for the 300,000 homes at night, on cloudy and rainy days.
What is the projected efficiency of this massive power plant compared to a typical coal fired or gas fired electric generation plant which works both day and night, rain or shine.
Is it possible that food could otherwise be grown on the land mass covered by all those mirrors?
How much of the cost of construction and operation is to be paid by taxpayers, without benefit, from the entire United States.
Will the cost of construction and operation ever become competitive with a simple coal fired power plant in the next 100 years?
Finally, Who is the benefactor of this Government largess, certainly not the taxpayers.
, ” some have questioned the projects’ potential impact on the desert’s fragile ecosystem ”
But if it were for an oil/gas project, they would all be screaming to high heavens about the damage to the ecosystem.
Hyprocrites.
I’ve nothing against this project, build all they want, its a good thing. But just don’t over exaggerate the environmental impact of oil and gas production.
tfagan, yes I also do not understand the loan guarantees. I would like to know the details of this arrangement.
There’s a lot of money changing hands here, and the liberal media will ignore the details.
This is about thermal plants that drive steam turbines, per the article. Not PV arrays, as illustrated.
It should cost $5.6B for 968 MW peak capacity (2 X $2.8B and 4 X 242 MW). Perhaps about 25% availability for Blythe. With no ongoing fuel costs at all.
A 960 MW coal-fired plant was ~ $3B in 2008.
http://www.synapse-energy.com/Downloads/SynapsePaper.2008-07.0.Coal-Plant-Construction-Costs.A0021.pdf
coal cost = $2.34 per MMBtu (avg)
$2.34 / MMBtu * (293.1 kWh / 1.0 MMBtu) = $0.008 / kWh
discounting turbine lossses @ 50%:
elec generated kWh = 0.008 / 0.5 = $0.016 per kWh
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html
Try about $0.022 per/kwh after you add in the cost of the loans? Oh yah don’t forgot about getting all kwh’s to the main grid? Unless you have some new wireless transmission lines expect this estimated cost to run $1.5 million per mile for poles and high voltage wiring. And of course everyone wants power companies to use miles of their land to support the power distribution and infrastructure of these systems? Hay just for fun let’s throw in the green people thumpers and tree huggers. They will gladly open there arms to allow your big and beautiful earth moving pay-loaders, trucks and earth movers access to various protected land dwellers, puddles, ponds, water ways and green-fields? The green thumpers would never take you to court and delay your PV project would they? Because that of course would raise the cost per kwh too. You forgot to mention that? Then end result here is cheap kwh to the hard working tax payers right? That would be a nice ancillary benefit but we all know it’s a pipe dream don’t we? By the way mother earth holds a lot of CO2 in her surface called dirt and even more concentrations in other various parts of her. Disturb these areas only releases this CO2 back into the atmosphere. Another ancillary benefit for the green movement.
ntangle:
First of all, let me be clear at the outset that I think that folks who are concerned about the environment have a duty to get solar if possible on their homes rather than spend money on cars, vacations, etc. I’ve made that choice.
I also think CA is doing the correct thing in their experimental energy program and that someday they will reap the benefits. Why they are not pursuing geothermal more is beyond me (but it does have a heavy initial environmental footprint)
Okay, let’s finish your math. You give a 25% uptime for solar so I will use that number and a 90% number for the coal plant.
Three billion might sound like a lot but over a 20 year period for the coal plant this works out to about 2 cents per kWH (Dwaine… downtime). For the 5.6 billion for the solar this works out to about 13 cents per kWH over a 20 year period.
So coal costs 3.6 cents per kWH and solar thermal 13.3 cents per kWH.
Solar is expensive.
To all the die-hard oil&gas and coal-fired powerplant proponents, take a hard and “HONEST” look at the degradation to the Earth’s climate due to emissions of CO2, SO2, NOx and others due to fossil burning. If you think this is some pseudo-science drilled up by Democrats or the left, and there is no clear evidence of that, then please study the hard data that is being collected by NASA through its Earth Observing Satellites, as well as other European satellites and other “serious climate research institutions” around the world. It is clear that we are hurting our planet big time with fossil-burning technologies is a major contributor to it.
Yes, it is true that at present the solar energy both CSP and CPV are little more expensive than traditional coal-fired plants but if you factor in the cost of CO2 and others dangerous climatic footprint and its dire consequences on Earth’s climate, than it’s not much of a price to pay to move towards cleaner technologies. There is much research already underway across the world in renewable technologies, although the US has been dragging its feet up to the last few years. In near future with developments in advanced materials for solar and other RE technologies, energy conversion efficiencies, advaced storage technologies, as well as nano-technologies applied to solar etc., life-cycle cost as well $/kwh for solar will become equally cost effective, if not cheaper than traditional fossil burning power plants. On top of this when one factors in the cost of global climate change due to fossil burning and its social as well as economical consequences to the planet then it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that moving towards cleaner technologies is the right choice.
It is high time we move towards safe and clean energy technologies such as Solar, wind, Biofuels, Ocean Wave/Tidal, Hybrid/Electric and others… We can waste time and argue over this while the rest of the developed and developing world is moving aggressively towards clean energy technologies approach as “the future global energy solution”.
Ron C.
Senior Aerospace Engineer.
Just to clarify my last comment, I am not saying that emissions from fossil-burning is the only contributor to the climate change but it is a major contributor to it. For example, in the last 650,000 years the CO2 levels have fluctuated but have never been higher than 300 parts per million but only in the last 61 years (from 1950 to 2011) the CO2 levels have shot up from 280 parts per million to 380 parts per million as of 2011. This is unprecendented in such as short time!!
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
or read the reports on IPCC assessments on climate change and supporting documentation:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml#1
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_supporting_material.shtml
Ron C.