esolar Plans to Announce Power Deal Next Week

Ucilia Wang | June 5, 2009 at 2:29 PM 0 Comments eSolar Plans to Announce Power Deal Next Week

Solar thermal technology developer eSolar is set to announce next week a power contract, said Craig Tyner, senior vice president of engineering, at the Concentrating Solar Thermal Power Summit 2009 in San Francisco Friday.

Tyner was tightlipped about the details, but said after his talk that the deal would be done through its partnership with NRG Energy. Pasadena, Calif.-based eSolar signed an agreement with NRG earlier this year to provide the equipment to NRG for developing power plants.

NRG also gets to develop the contracts already secured by eSolar, the companies said when announcing the deal. NRG agreed to pay eSolar $10 million for the development rights and as an equity investment. NRG would own and operate solar farms using eSolar's technology and sell power to utilities.

In addition to the contract to be announced next week, eSolar also signed another contract just last week, said Tyner, who wouldn't say more.

eSolar decided to become a technology provider instead of focusing only on being a power project developer because developing a project requirement demands resources that a startup like eSolar wouldn't have, Tyner said.

One of the big hurdles for any utility-scale power project developer is to line up the millions of dollars for each project. Getting financing wasn't easy even before the financial market crumbled. The credit crunch only has deepened that challenge.

Ausra, a fellow solar thermal technology developer in California, also decided to focus on selling its equipment for now instead of developing and owning power plants. OptiSolar, another startup company in California that set out to develop power projects using solar panels, sold its project development business to First Solar when it couldn't come up with the money to go on.

Tyner said eSolar could still develop power projects in the future when market conditions improve.

eSolar also has licensed its technology to the Acme Group, an Indian company with an ambition to build 1 gigawatt of solar thermal power plants in India. 

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