Renewable Power News » Mojave Desert

Utility Sized Solar Power Facilities Ramping Up Across The United States

Henry Andrew — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:10:24 +0000

The US Government’s Department Of The Interior is concentrating efforts to develop renewable power programs built on public land regulated by the Bureau of Land Management. One particular plan has them focusing on the use of enormous tracts of arid desert land to construct utility scale solar power plants. Just the sound of the name lends itself to its definition of huge power facilities or solar energy farms where the power is produced and provided to many people. For the most part, power utility companies have kept a low profile until now.

Two varieties of solar power exist today able to supply large requirements: Solar thermal and photovoltaic cell technologies.
Basically speaking, solar thermal energy is generated when the sun heats fluids that produce steam and the steam is then utilized to power a generator or turbine. Utility scale enterprises use mirrors or lenses that focus the sun’s rays in a concentrated manner like a kid with a magnifying glass.

With photovoltaic solar cell technology [PV], the sun radiates on to the solar panel or the solar film where it converts into an electrical current. This PV apparatus is a semi conductor cell. Photovoltaic is defined as converting or producing electric current or charge after exposure to a light source or radiated energy.

Smaller kinds of solar photovoltaic devices have been around for some time now such as calculators, flashlights, garden lights etc. Mid size utilization would be powering a home a couple rooms within a home or a garage. Large utilization of Photovoltaic usage would be enormous utility scale solar power arrays installed in large areas with unremitting sunlight directed at the facility.

The use of large scale solar power plants is still novel and in development stages. Technology is progressing rapidly as is the overall interest in solar as a source of renewable power. The government however, has been slow to adapt to utility scale solar power. It is still treading in new turf when commencing discussions regarding Utility scale solar power plants. California is beginning to move into utility solar to a larger degree. Pacific Gas and Electric [PG&E] is working on a development alongside Topaz Solar Farms which they hope will begin generating power by next year and move into peak production by 2013.

It has been forecast that the PG&E solar project will add a further 1.1 million megawatts to the California grid with more projects projected at a utility scale for California and Nevada. They are also looking at utilizing solar thermal power also. Further solar power plans are under evaluation for Florida, Arizona and surprisingly New Jersey. US Secretary of the Interior Kenneth Salazar has discussed fast tracking some developments for this year of 2010 that would mean fourteen projects slated for US government property. In January of this year, the number of applications was one hundred twenty eight sent to the Bureau of Land Management for building large utility solar facilities.

One of the potential road blocks for rapid development of utility scale solar plants is a dearth of transmission capabilities. Most big utility solar facilities need to be built in remote locations where land is available and sunshine is abundant, and the remote desert locations fill this requirement. Secretary Salazar has since made an announcement that approximately five thousand miles of transmission cabling onto land corridors on managed land has been allotted. They are also managing the right of way access applications for other available lands.

Solar energy is free and a widely available source of power. Certain spots in the US have the ideal conditions to sustain utility scale solar power. The solar power plants run clean and are renewable energy sources as opposed to fossil fuel operations, which are finite petro based systems and come at a cost to the environment. What is required is a durable and long standing plan for creating new and reliable supplies of power including utility scale solar power.

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Evolution of Solar Energy; Demand at Rise

Jimmy Eriksson — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 02:19:25 +0000

In the street of San Francisco, Ron Kenedi sees great prospect. The vice president of Sharp Solar says that demand keeps on expanding and Japanese are also taking renewable energy seriously. Kenedi says that the remarkable thing is that demand is exponentially increasing worldwide and not only locally.

Going back some years, solar energy wasn’t at vogue. In the time when Ronald Reagan removed the solar panels setup on the White House by Jimmy Carter, no one saw solar energy as a key for the future. Nowadays, everyone is eager to have one on their business or home.

It is an energy boom that is felt across the globe. The growth is in what is called distributed generation capacity. Solar panels can be placed wherever energy is needed. Earlier, small-scale solar panels had to compete with large solar thermal plants usually erected in the desert but technology has brought solar energy nearer to the customers.

‘Concentrated solar panels’ set up by eSolar, Solar Millennium and BrightSource Energy made typical photovoltaic panels unattractive. The mirror solar panels used to steam a generator was much more effective in changing electrons into pure electricity.

Nowadays, solar thermal projects are viewed differently. They have many drawbacks such as having high transmission cost and being distanced from large cities. Moreover, solar thermal project may harm the ecosystem of desert, according to Dianne Feinstein, California’s powerful Democratic senator. New legislations has even been introduced to prevent renewable projects on million of Acres at the Mojave Desert.

The price of conventional photovoltaic panels has also drastically decreased during the recent years. This has been mainly due to oversupply and thanks to low-cost poly-silicon from Chinese manufactures. Some solar modules can be made available for less than a dollar a watt. This is what has really made solar energy competitive. Cheaply available thin film solar cells and crystalline solar modules have even given birth to photovoltaic power plants.

Distributive solar projects are going from large-scale to small-scale production. There is already massive expansion of solar energy projects underway and in some regions solar energy will provide as much energy as huge nuclear power plant

California is certainly the most innovative state in the field of renewable energy. For instance, Southern California Edison is undergoing a five year project to install up to 500 MW of solar arrays at commercial rooftops. Moreover, PG&E might also expand with 500 MW distribution solar panels on nearby substations to the Northern California utility. On small-scales solar energy are being plugged directly to the electricity grid.

Sharp Solar is experiencing its highest demand from utility companies. The effect is not simply a California happening. Recently, the New York Power Authority announced its plan to install 100 MW photovoltaic panels. Moreover, Sacramento Municipal Utility District is going for a 100 megawatt project.

Renewable energy projects are unfolding rapidly to address climate pressure. Yet, solar alone is unable to cope with increasing demands. All alternative sources of energy will be required. These include geothermal, waves, wind, solar panels and thermal solar projects.

Source: Grist

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US Army And Mojave Desert Host 500 Megawatt Solar Power Facility

Richard Nelson — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:47:23 +0000

In keeping with a government mandate to reduce energy consumption, the US army has agreed to terms with Irwin Security Partners to construct a two billion dollar, five hundred megawatt [MW] solar energy power plant based at Fort Irwin and the Mojave desert of California.

Via an enhanced use lease [EUL], the Army Corp of Engineers will be leasing 14000 acres at Fort Irwin to Irwin Energy Security Partners in a venture jointly managed by ACCIONA Solar Power out of Henderson, Nevada and the Clark Energy Group from Bethesda, Maryland. Financed and constructed by the venture partners, they will also be responsible for delivering eventual services such as operations and maintenance to the Army in quid pro quo for the military land lease. Any power left unused by the Fort Irwin base a can be resold to commercial power grid suppliers by two large transmission lines located near the base.

The Department of Defense claims the Ft. Irwin base solar power project will be its largest installation of solar technology, far out sizing the fourteen MW solar plant at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada or the two MW project at Ft Carson in Colorado.

Army technologists will be choosing five sites where power installations will be set up. The solar project at the Ft. Irwin Base is scalable up to one thousand MW at a time to be determined later on. The DoD expects the initial stage of the installation to be completed in 2014, providing Ft Irwin with enough power to sustain itself. The Ft. Irwin installation will be utilizing concentrated solar thermal and photovoltaic technology.

The Fort Irwin project initiation follows what was an intense bidding war begun in March by the novel group called the US Army’s Senior Energy Council which was formed in the fall of 2008 to provide oversight for a sustainable energy policy designed to locate alternative power supplies, realize more energy savings and to find energy supplies required by US Army compounds, personnel and transportation services among certain other holdings.

The government mandate requires that the US Army decrease its use of energy by thirty percent by 2015 and that one quarter of all its power requirements are using renewable energy solutions by the year 2025. By utilizing the EUL scenario private companies are able to acquire land which is underused on military bases as well as other Department of Defense Facilities. This new five hundred MW solar project is predicted to generate roughly one thousand Gigawatt hours [GWh] yearly, which well exceeds Fort Irwin’s thirty Five MW top usage.

Fort Irwin is a sprawling military base with five thousand recruits turning out each month. It also houses NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex with antennas poised for communicating into space during missions.

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