Albiasa Concentrating Solar Power Back on Mohave County Arizona

Albiasa Concentrating Solar Power Back on Mohave County Arizona Mohave County commissioners tabled the hearing a month ago because there wasn’t enough reliable information on the Albiasa project’s potential impacts on local water supplies. Jobs and where the energy would go were also issues. But Albiasa Corp. is back, presumably having resolved the aforementioned issues to resident’s satisfaction.The Albiasa Corp. proposal is for a 200-megawatt concentrating solar plant on 1,800 acres off Highway 90 north of Wikieup. Approving it will require commissioners to revise the county’s general land-use plan, changing the designation for this particular plot from agricultural residential to heavy manufacturing.The largest issue is water; that is dry cooling versus wet cooling, or a hybrid of the two. To settle it, Albiasa hired Beck Consulting Engineers, who used a 1986 U.S. Geological Survey report that shows the Big Sandy aquifer holds about 10 billion acre-feet of water, and is being replenished annually by 22,000 acre-feet – a source residents dispute, saying it is too old to reflect actual conditions. The plant will use 2,270 acre-feet per year.Another question concerns the 2,000 construction jobs and 100 permanent jobs created by the plant, and how many would remain local. Albiasa Corp. has reassured residents that – because the company is an American Company (that is, with regional offices in America) – it will not discriminate in its job offering, or give the jobs to Spanish nationals, even though Albiasa’s headquarters are in Spain.A final concern, where will the electricity generated go, has been addressed, with both builders and WAPA (the Western Area Power Administration) admitting the power will go into the grid to serve homes and businesses as, and where, needed.The solar project would take about two years to build, is funded by $1-billion in capital investment, and will – with the help of molten salt storage technology – provide more than 665,000 megawatt-hours of renewable solar energy when completed in 2013.The state is also negotiating several similar projects, and the Albiasa plant is the second concentrating solar facility in the state, the first being Abengoa Solar, which plans to build a 280-megawatt solar plant near Gila Bend that will sell power to Arizona Public Service.