BULLHEAD CITY - There's another side of the coin regarding solar energy plants being built in Mohave County and elsewhere in Arizona - they use lots of water, a precious commodity in this part of the country.
Tom Whitmer, manager of statewide planning, Arizona Department of Water Resources, briefed the Bullhead Regional Economic Development Authority (BREDA) board of directors during their Thursday morning meeting.
Whitmer said nearly 50 solar power plants are proposed on BLM land alone in Arizona. “Some are massive,” he said. One proposed for the Quartzsite area would encompass 244,000 acres of mirrors “and basically would generate almost as much power as what is currently being generated by all the power plants in the state,” Whitmer said.
In all, 899,000 acres dedicated to solar power plants in Arizona would generate three to four times more than what currently is being generated by coal, gas or nuclear power, he said.
“The problem with solar power plants is, most people, they hear ‘solar' and they go, ‘Green technology! This is great!'” Whitmer said.
Most are “concentrated solar plants,” which “operate basically the same way that a coal plant does or that nuke plant does in terms of water,” he said.
“There are some industry standards out there that say if you're using a ‘wet' cooling system for concentrated solar, they actually use more water than coal or nuke,” Whitmer said.
The three solar plants proposed for Mohave County are all water-intensive, he added.
“They say that (an alternative) dry cooling system takes 25 percent of the water the wet cooling system does,” Whitmer said. “All the concentrated solar folks out there right now are opposed to the dry cooling because it reduces their efficiencies. (It) reduces their bottom line in terms of the profit they can make off of that.”
Legislation is being considered to designate Arizona as the solar capital of the United States, he said. That would streamline the approval process for solar plants on federal property.
“(My) department's opposed to something of that nature,” Whitmer said.
Arizona won't benefit from those solar plants, said Bullhead City Mayor Jack Hakim, also a BREDA board member. “The energy is not going to come to Mohave County. It's going to go to California or another state,” he said. “So ... we're giving our precious water to have these solar plants running and the energy that's produced from these solar plants is not coming to Mohave County and it's not coming to our residents,” Hakim said.
The Arizona Department of Water Resources doesn't have any say over solar plants, Whitmer said. “There's nothing we can do in regards to limiting power plants. That doesn't come under our authority that's granted to us by the legislature.”
He said the Arizona Corporation Commission has some oversight over solar plants greater than 100 megawatts. “They have the ability to look at what the potential environmental impacts will be caused as the result of that power plant.”
“If I knew for sure that there's a solar energy plant that's going up in the county somewhere and we were going to benefit from that energy and help reduce our electric (bills), then I'm all for it,” Hakim said after the meeting concluded. “But nobody's telling us where it's going to go to.”
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