Sunrise for solar heat power

Nearly a century ago, American engineer Frank Shuman erected five immense, trough-shaped mirrors in Meadi, Egypt. The parabolic reflectors directed sunlight onto a tube suspended above their 200-foot lengths. Water inside the tubes boiled and created steam. The steam powered a 65-horsepower engine, which pumped 6,000 gallons of water per minute from the Nile River to nearby cotton fields. It was the world’s first concentrated solar power (CSP) plant.

CSP entails focusing the sun’s rays with a reflective surface and putting that energy to work. These days, the heat usually goes to generating electricity. But the principle is quite old.

The ancient Chinese used concave mirrors to start fires, and, according to legend, the Greek mathematician and scientist Archimedes once used mirrors, perhaps of polished bronze, to ignite and burn an invading Roman fleet.

Shuman was addressing a concern of his time: Fossil fuels, particularly coal, powered the Industrial Revolution – the trains and mills, among other things, that radically changed human experience. But what happens when they ran out?

“One thing I feel sure of, and that is that the human race must finally utilize direct sun power or revert to barbarism,” Shuman told Scientific American magazine in 1911.
Fighting during World War I destroyed Shuman’s plant. But in the end it was cheap, abundant oil that obviated his ideas – or seemed to.

The oil crises of the 1970s again piqued interest in CSP, and, in the 1980s, plants resembling Shuman’s began cropping up in the Mojave Desert. Then natural-gas prices plummeted and the cycle repeated itself. No new commercial-scale CSP plants were built for nearly 20 years.

Now CSP is poised for a second – or third, depending on when the count begins – renaissance. And this time, say experts, it’s here to stay. World CSP capacity is forecast to increase nearly 18-fold in the next five years, from its current 588 megawatt potential to around 10.5 gigawatts. (Very roughly, 100 megawatts is enough energy to power 80,000 houses.) More than half of that new CSP capacity will be installed in the United States.

Several factors are driving the CSP boom. Although utility companies have long viewed CSP as an option for generating electricity from the sun, they’ve hesitated to commit to the technology. That’s partly because CSP becomes efficient and cost-effective only at the megawatt (MW) scale.

Photovoltaics, by contrast, can be installed piecemeal on the kilowatt scale – a panel here, another there. And that’s why photovoltaics have so far dominated the solar market.
Now, the specter of carbon regulation has shifted attention back toward CSP. The prospect of large-scale solar plants is again attractive. The “renewable portfolio” standard – which requires increased production of energy from renewable sources – has also encouraged investment in CSP. And the investment tax credit – a potential 30 percent credit on qualifying solar projects – has made investors more willing to risk capital in CSP ventures.

Solar is here to stay, now

“Twenty years ago, everyone thought the solar era was upon us, and then the industry basically went away when oil and gas got cheap,” says Cara Libby, project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, Calif. Now, “it certainly appears that solar is here to stay.”

For their part, power companies like CSP for old-fashioned reasons. For one, it uses a technology – steam-driven turbines – that is familiar after decades of use in coal-fired plants.

CSP plants also have thermal inertia. That means that, if a cloud passes overhead, they can continue operating for a time with the heat already gathered, and that’s without storage.

Assuming no rechargeable batteries, photovoltaic fields, by contrast, stop producing electricity when clouds arrive.

Technology for storing heat in molten salts, meanwhile, promises to extend CSP plants’ generating capacity well into the night.

But the bottom line is that natural-gas prices are volatile, an unknown for anyone trying to turn a profit. By comparison, CSP costs – when stretched over the life of a plant – are mostly (80 percent, by one estimate) related to installation. CSP maintenance costs are relatively small, and the sun, its fuel, is free.

“There’s a hedging aspect in building a solar thermal plant,” says Nathaniel Bullard, a solar-sector analyst with New Energy Finance in Washington. “Right now it makes sense to burn gas; it’s really cheap. But you could, in the future, end up losing your shirt on it.”

Inventor Thomas Edison, a contemporary of Shuman’s and the man who gave us the system of steam-generated electricity distributed by wires, told friends late in his life that “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power!”

Earth has a natural “sun belt,” a swath of relatively empty subtropical deserts including the US Southwest, the Sahara, the Middle East, and much of Australia. By one estimate, installing CSP plants in just 1 percent of the world’s deserts – an area slightly larger than Ireland – could supply all the world’s electricity.

The German Aerospace Center calculates that, assuming high voltage, transmediterranean transmission lines, just 6,023 square miles of CSP in North Africa could keep all of Europe electrified.

In the US, CSP plants in the Southwest could generate 11,000 gigawatts (GWs) of electricity, says Mark Mehos, principal program manager of concentrating solar power at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo. That’s roughly 10 times all the electrical generating capacity currently in place, including coal, nuclear, solar, and hydroelectric – more than enough for the country’s energy needs.

In other words, there’s plenty of sun. The real challenge is making CSP technology competitive with coal.

Currently, CSP costs about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh), within striking range of current combined-cycle natural-gas plants, in which a gas turbine generator generates electricity and a steam turbine uses the waste heat to generate more. A combined-cycle natural-gas plant produces electricity for about 12 cents per kWh.

Pulverized coal plants, on the other hand, generate electricity for 6 cents per kWh – less than half CSP’s cost. But, says Mr. Mehos, if you assume that future coal-fired plants will require carbon sequestration, then that cost moves up to about 10 cents per kWh. That means CSP prices still need to drop by nearly one-third to be competitive with future coal plants.

A plethora of CSP companies are racing to innovate and reduce costs. At this point, CSP technology comes in four general “flavors,” each with different perceived strengths and weaknesses.

Parabolic-trough systems focus the sun’s energy onto a tube running their length. Temperatures in the tube can reach 750 degrees F. A medium in the tube – sometimes synthetic oil that transfers its heat to water, sometimes water itself – collects heat to drive turbines. A second troughlike system, called a Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector, uses several mirrors to focus the sun’s rays on a single receiver tube above.

Trough technology benefits from being proven. That was Shuman’s design, and it’s the one the Mojave plants installed in the 1980s and ’90s. A planned 280-MW CSP plant near Phoenix will use trough technology, and store heat for electrical generation in molten salts.

‘Power towers’ more efficient
But experts say that, although it’s a known quantity, trough technology may be less efficient than newer, albeit less-tested, approaches. One reason: Newer systems achieve higher temperatures, which greatly increase efficiency.

So-called “power towers” – thousands of mirrors, or heliostats, directing the sun’s rays at a central tower – can achieve 1,300 degrees F. They also benefit from not having to pump the receiver fluid through tubing, an energy loss.

The first commercial scale “power tower” plant began operating near Seville, Spain, in 2007. The 11-MW plant resembles a gigantic, silver-petaled flower reflecting rays of light toward a central stamen. (Others compare it to the lidless Eye of Sauron in the “Lord of the Rings” movies.)

In the US, eSolar recently brought a 5-MW “power tower” demonstration plant on line near Lancaster, Calif. It includes a number of innovations, says Jim Shandalov, eSolar’s vice president of business development. Its relatively small mirrors – thousands of them about a yard square – rise no higher than four feet. Compared with troughs, which can be up to 10 feet high, or the Spanish plant, which has mirrors mounted on frames more than 120 square meters in area, the four-foot height keeps the wind profile down. A smaller profile also means fewer building materials.

Small, flat mirrors are also cheaper to manufacture, transport, and install, he says. An automated robot on a track can clean and maintain the mirrors, further cutting costs.
Finally, new software calibrates each mirror individually, an improvement over the “two walkie-talkie men” method of yore, says Mr. Shandalov, “We’ve made it more efficient.” (He won’t say by how much – that’s a trade secret.)

A fourth CSP option uses a reflective parabolic dish. A Stirling engine, the basic design of which is 200 years old, sits at the dish’s focal point. About the size of a motorcycle engine, it contains hydrogen gas. When heated, the gas drives four pistons, generating electricity on the spot. Stirling Energy Systems and its partner company, Tessera Solar, use this approach in their SunCatcher. A 1.5-MW demonstration plant is slated to begin operating in January near Phoenix.

Most efficient method costs more

Some point out that this method’s large pedestals holding the glass parabolas, some 38 feet across, represent a cost that low-profile, flat-mirror approaches have successfully eliminated.

Nonetheless, in purely thermodynamic terms, the SunCatcher is the most efficient CSP approach so far. It converts 31 percent of the sun’s energy to grid-ready electricity. By comparison, photovoltaic ranges between 8 and 15 percent efficiency, and trough CSP between 15 and 19 percent.

The SunCatcher has one more advantage: The engines aren’t cooled with water. The hydrogen cools in an air radiator similar to that found in a car.

That’s important because, in the arid and semiarid regions of the desert Southwest, where CSP makes the most sense, water is already a hot-button issue. And it’s predicted to become more so.

“The Southwest is a great place to build solar, but it’s not a great place to build water-intensive solar,” says Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, Calif., a nonprofit devoted to sustainability issues.

Air-cooling CSP is possible, but can decrease efficiency and – in some situations and regions – increase costs by 5 to 10 percent. Yet for some, it’s already a selling point. BrightSource Energy, a company developing a 400-MW “power tower” plant in the Mojave, touts the fact that its plant will be entirely air-cooled.

Other companies are developing new, cost-saving materials. SkyFuel in Albuquerque, N.M., is testing a reflective laminate material that, it says, is more durable than standard glass. Theoretically usable in any of the CSP approaches, it’s 10 to 20 percent cheaper than glass mirrors, says Andi Plocek, SkyFuel’s marketing director.

Many see cost-­effective heat storage as the biggest long-term hurdle for CSP. “The cost of storage is higher than we thought,” says Mehos.

Eventually, utilities will want to generate electricity from renewable sources through the night. To do that with CSP, they’ll need to store the sun’s energy.

Molten salts – used as fertilizer in agriculture – are one solution. But they’re also potentially difficult to handle. They freeze below a certain temperature, possibly clogging the system if allowed to cool. Another consideration with any storage is that with each transfer of heat between media, energy is lost and efficiency diminishes.

In other words, on the cusp of a CSP boom, which technology will dominate and how it will store heat is still very much an open question.

“It’s hard to predict who’s going to win in the end, if there is a winner,” says EPRI’s Ms. Libby: “We need to get more hardware on the ground and really test out all the ­options.”

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German Partnership Targets US Southwest for Concentrating Solar

Two German companies have joined forces to enter the U.S. utility-scale solar market.

Solar thermal company Solar Millennium and plant construction firm MAN Ferrostaal announced a joint venture, called Solar Trust of America, LLC, to turnkey development, construction and financing of large-scale concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in the southwestern region of the United States.

Solar Millennium and MAN Ferrostaal are both contributing assets and technical expertise to Solar Trust of America and will be shareholders in the new company.

Solar Trust of America will employ Solar Millenniums Flagsol parabolic trough technology exclusively in North America.

Uwe T. Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Solar Trust of America, said “With thousands of fully-funded and completed industrial projects in the combined portfolios of our business partners, we expect to become the industry leader in the development and construction of these solar thermal power plants in the U.S.”

Solar Millennium, LLC, of Berkeley, California, will serve as the development arm for Solar Trust of America.

Solar Trust said it is ideally positioned to build on the success of Solar Millennium, LLC’s June 17, 2009 announcement of the execution of power purchase agreements with Southern California Edison (SCE). The agreements, which are subject to approval by the California Public Utilities Commission, call for the development of two, 242-megawatt (MW) power plants, with the option to expand to include a third 242-megawatt plant, for a total of up to 726 megawatts of capacity, and provide for the purchase of the output by SCE over a 20-year period. These solar thermal power plants are expected to begin operation between 2013 and 2014.

Solar Millennium AG is the company responsible for the development of the Andasol 1, 2 and 3 solar thermal power plants constructed in Spain. Two of these plants feature large-scale thermal storage technology capable of extending power production for up to 7.5 hours per day after the sun sets. MAN Ferrostaal AG is leading the Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) for Andasol 3, which is currently under construction in Andalusia and scheduled to be connected to the local grid in 2011.

Uwe Schmidt emphasized that the development, engineering, local procurement and construction of the utility-size thermal solar power plants should provide an economic boost to the region. “Each of these plants will include investments of more than $1 billion. Each plant is expected to directly employ more than 800 skilled workers during the initial construction phase and create approximately 100 permanent jobs for operations, maintenance and management employees. And, each plant is expected to indirectly create thousands of additional jobs as Solar Trust of America procures materials, goods and services for each facility in the U.S.”

Website: www.SolarTrustofAmerica.com

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The SunCatcher: Concentrating Solar Dishes Set Efficiency Record

Wouldn’t it be amazing if the old magnifying glass on a sunny day trick could be used for good instead of evil? Well, meet the SunCatcher. Created by Stirling Energy Systems in collaboration with Tessera Solar, the SunCatcher is a parabolic dish composed entirely of precision mirrors. Following the sun from east to west, the SunCatcher squeezes every last drop of energy out of the sun’s rays by focusing the light onto its very own innovative and truly sustainable power conversion unit. Read on to find out how it works!

Each SunCatcher is carefully engineered to wake up in the morning and follow the sun across the sky, concentrating an entire day of direct sunlight onto a single point called, quite appropriately, the power conversion unit (PCU). The SunCatcher’s PCU contains a set of hydrogen gas-filled receiver tubes that become pressurized as they’re heated by the sun’s carefully focused energy. The high temperature and pressure of the hydrogen gas then powers the on-board Solar Stirling Engine, and finally, a generator connected to the output of the Solar Stirling Engine converts the sun’s light to grid-quality electricity. The hydrogen gas is then cooled by a radiator system and recycled through the technology, completely eliminating the need for water and creating an entirely self-contained process.

Stirling Energy Systems has already found incredible success with the SunCatcher in dozens of markets across the globe, having seen more than 50,000 on-sun hours to date. Stirling’s Solar Dish equipment also boasts the distinction of holding the world’s efficiency record for conversion of solar energy into electricity. The array responsible for setting this record was installed nearly 25 years ago in Huntington Beach, CA and only increases our belief that we’ll be seeing more of the SunCatcher in the not-too-distant future.

+ Stirling Energy Systems

+ Tessera Solar

Via DesignBoom

Project to Power Europe With Sahara Sun Gains Momentum

Published: August 24, 2009

RABAT, MOROCCO — A €400 billion plan to power Europe with sunlight from the Sahara is gaining momentum, despite warnings about starting a large corporate project using new technologies in countries of northern Africa where the rule of law is weak.

Desertec, as the $573 billion initiative is called, would be the world’s most ambitious solar power project. Fields of mirrors in the desert would gather solar rays to boil water, turning turbines to electrify a new carbon-free network linking Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Its supporters — a dozen finance and industrial firms mostly from Germany — say that it would keep Europe at the forefront of the fight against climate change and help North African and European economies to grow within greenhouse gas emission limits.

But critics warn of numerous pitfalls, including the politics of the Maghreb region, Saharan sandstorms and the risk to desert populations if their water is diverted to clean dust off solar mirrors.

The detractors say that the concentrated solar power technology behind Desertec involves greater costs and risks than the fast-growing patchwork of smaller-scale photovoltaic cell installations that generate most of Europe’s solar energy today.

Desertec’s founders are lured by the fact that more energy falls on the world’s deserts in six hours than the world consumes in a year.

“The Sahara offers every advantage you want: proximity to Europe, virtually no population and more intense sunlight,” said George Joffe, a research fellow and Maghreb expert at Cambridge University in England, who is not affiliated with the plan. “It would be mad to pass up this opportunity.”

Proposed by the Club of Rome, an international group of experts that suggests solutions to global problems, Desertec became an industrial project last month when the reinsurer Munich Re sponsored a kick-off at its headquarters in the Bavarian capital.

The experts have yet to draw up a business plan or specify how the project would be financed. But they hope to recruit shareholders and partner companies from a variety of countries.

“We have a special relationship with climate change,” said Peter Hoeppe, the head of Munich Re’s Geo Risk Research department. “It affects our core business, the insurance of weather-related natural catastrophes, which count among the most expensive losses we have to bear.”

Many European governments aim to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Desertec’s backers say it would also be a positive gesture from the developed world to countries of the Middle East and North Africa, which stand to suffer most from the more frequent droughts and the expansion of deserts blamed on global warming.

Desertec says the Sahara could one day deliver 15 percent of the electricity used by Europe, but company officials expect the plan to advance in small stages with completion around 2050.

Still, supporters of more established solar energy technology, like photovoltaic cells, argue that decentralized generation will prove more popular. Falling prices for those cells would make the heavy infrastructure needed for Desertec’s concentrated solar power unviable.

European governments already importing fossil fuels from northern African countries like Algeria. But critics of Desertec argue that, given the choice, most would opt for the security of producing renewable energy within their own borders.

“Sahara power for northern Europe is a mirage,” said Hermann Scheer, a member of the German Parliament and the head of the European Association for Renewable Energy. “Those behind the project know themselves that nothing will ever come out of this.”

Mr. Scheer is an architect of renewable energy policy in Germany, which included a strong emphasis on photovoltaic technology. He said the costs of Desertec were being played down and its technical capabilities overestimated.

Desertec would need 20 or more efficient, direct-current cables each costing up to $1 billion to transmit electricity north beneath the Mediterranean.

Proponents say that North African countries that import most of their energy like Morocco and Tunisia could also benefit from Desertec.

But Desertec would need tight coordination between regional governments to succeed, and Maghreb states have tried and failed for two decades to integrate their economies and deepen political ties.

The border between Morocco and Algeria is shut and relations are poisoned by a dispute about the western Sahara.

Morocco says it has already identified sites to place the curved solar mirrors, not deep in the Sahara but in populated areas just north of the desert to ensure a supply of water to clean mirrors and cool turbines.

Morocco imports 96 percent of its energy and subsidizes fuel to make it more affordable for the poor, a massive drain on state resources.

“We would be generating enough power for us, and for export, for the next 100 years,” said Said Mouline, the head of Morocco’s renewable energy agency.

Algeria has the biggest chunk of desert and a private Algerian company, Cevital, has signed up for Desertec. But Algeria, the second-largest county in Africa after Sudan, is isolated and struggling to reform a Soviet-style economy after a brutal civil conflict in the 1990s.

The government has tightened terms on inward investment and says it will only work with Desertec if it allows partnerships between Algerian and foreign firms and a transfer of technology.

“If these conditions are not met, we are not interested,” said the energy and mines minister of Algeria, Chakib Khelil. “We don’t want foreign companies exploiting solar energy from our land.”

Analysts play down the risk to infrastructure posed by rebels aligned with Al Qaeda in Algeria, saying that the investment risks pose a far bigger problem.

“There is the risk of expropriation of assets, reneging on license agreements, corruption and bureaucratic red tape which could stop things getting off the ground,” said Henry Wilkinson of Janusian Security Risk Management.

Wolfram Lacher of the consultancy Control Risks agreed: Security risks can be managed, but the project could become entangled in broader talks between the European Union and north Africa on energy, investment and trade.

EarthSure Announces A Very "COOL" Way to "Go Green"

WOODBRIDGE, N.J.--(Business Wire)-- Imagine turning on your air conditioner and watching your electric bill go DOWN! EarthSure, a renewable energy company and innovator in alternative energy sources announces the latest patent-pending renewable energy invention. WindAir, a system for transforming the exhausted air flow from central air conditioning units into a source of renewable, clean energy (electric) will be bursting into the HVAC scene world-wide just in time for the next heat-wave. How it Works: The WindAir system uses the warm air flow from the exhaust of a traditional air conditioning unit and drives it into a secondary fan turbine system. This secondary system has an electric-generating mechanism that transforms the wind flow into free, clean, renewable energy which is then inverted into the electric meter of the home or office building. This renewable energy has the capability to reduce the increase in electric used by the air conditioning system by generating enough electricity to send it back to the meter, thereby turning the air conditioning unit into an actual "sub-power station". So every time you turn on the central air or cooling systems, your electric bill goes down instead of up! How`s that for a "cool" way to go green? The unique WindAir converter system can be incorporated into any existing air conditioning condenser unit or manufactured as a complete new unit. This technology can be utilized within small homeowner units all the way up to the largest of commercial air conditioning applications. Benefits: The first and foremost benefit to the WindAir system is the ability to save significant amounts of money on one`s electric bill. Who doesn`t want to pay less? Secondly, the system turns an electric-guzzling machine that has been used for years and transforms it into a renewable energy source, aiding in a way to keep the environment clean, reducing our carbon footprint, and also lessening our reliance on foreign dependence on outside power sources. The accomplishments of this novel secondary stage fan turbine will also offset the surge of electric that is straining our power plants and sub-stations during hot summer months. The unique methodology of this second stage fan turbine is actually turning an agent that normally uses a lot of electricity into a source that uses renewable energy. The unique WindAir `shroud` design will absorb the AC units` operational sound to minimize the units` noise pollution output, making for a much more peaceful environment. The `shroud` design also captures more of the exhausted air conditioning unit`s air and funnels it in a more concentrated fashion with less waste of air stream, which will equate to higher electrical output. The unit is also designed to protect the inside components of outdoor AC units from being exposed to the elements of weather, making these components rust-free and longer lasting. This design is also pet friendly and rodent resistant and in addition to eliminating the weather elements, it will keep out leaves and foreign debris. About Earth-Sure: EarthSure Renewable Energy Corp. is an American corporation innovating technologies to produce energy in a clean and affordable way. Utilizing solar and wind power as a source of renewable energy, EarthSure systems are alternatives to conventional energy producing methods that result in carbon emissions. Ray Saluccio, an accomplished inventor and entrepreneur founded EarthSure Renewable Energy Corp. in order to market and develop the systems he designs and to bring solar energy production to the masses, easily and affordably. EarthSure`s goal is to offer a cost-effective way for all individuals and businesses to use Green Energy, regardless of size or industry. They are on the cutting edge of compliance with America's Green Initiatives as they relate to the energy and environmental provisions in the Stimulus Plan. For more information about WindAir and the many other innovative developments in solar and wind power created by EarthSure, visit their website at www.Earth-Sure.com. EarthSure Renewable Energy Corp. Ray Saluccio, 908-642-3029 RaySaluccio@Earth-Sure.com Copyright Business Wire 2009

Fluor building solar-thermal blueprints for eSolar to license globally

California solar technology developer also expects to begin commercial operations within the next month at its 5-MW demonstration power plant under a PPA with Southern California Edison.

Pasadena, Calif.-based eSolar has signed an agreement with Irving, Texas-based Fluor (NYSE:FLR) for the engineering firm to develop designs for a commercial, 46-megawatt power plant using solar thermal technology.

ESolar, with one demonstration plant under its belt, has tapped Fluor to optimize the cost and performance of its existing designs, said Rob Rogan, senior vice president for North American markets for eSolar. Then, eSolar plans to license out the instructions to speed the time to market for power plants based on its proprietary technology, built in multiples of 46 MW.

"ESolar's bandwidth is not as great as any of the major energy developers," Rogan told the Cleantech Group. "This is effectively a blueprint that developers around the world can use for deploying eSolar technology."

Rogan declined to share financial terms of the agreement, or specify when the designs are expected to be complete. He said he expects the licensing agreements to make up the largest portion of the company's future revenue, but that eSolar still plans to develop its own power plants in the future.

ESolar developed a modular, scalable solar thermal power technology that focuses thousands of mirrors on a single point to efficiently harvest the sun’s energy and reduce costs (see Cleantech Group picks winners and losers in concentrated solar thermal). The key element of eSolar's"secret sauce" lies in software that operates the solar field with the necessary degree of precision and reliability, Rogan said.

Fluor's engineers plan to study eSolar's existing designs, in addition to working with the startup's team and studying the 5-MW Sierra SunTower facility. ESolar commissioned Sierra in August, heralding it as the first to use power-tower technology in the United States (see eSolar completes 5-MW power-tower solar plant as NRG waits in wings).

"ESolar's focus has always been on the technology portion," Rogan said. "Our corporate-level goal is to have the most megawatts of technology deployed worldwide, and we realized early on that, if we went to build the Sierra power plant and waited until it was up and running to have third-party developers begin building other plants based on our technology, we'd be waiting a long time."

Rogan said eSolar has connected the Sierra SunTower facility to the grid and is now delivering test energy. The company plans to start commercial operations "in the next month or so," he said, which would allow eSolar to begin fulfilling its power-purchase agreement with utility Southern California Edison (see SCE brings more solar thermal to California).

Rogan said there are a few minor things to be done, such as installing sprinklers and paving the driveway.

"The steam conditions out of the tower are very close to our design points, which we're thrilled about, and we essentially see the performance we expected to see," he said.

See the power-tower plant here »

Rogan said eSolar plans to sell the licenses around the globe, with the exception of India. India’s Acme Group paid $30 million for a 5-percent stake in eSolar, giving it the exclusive license to eSolar's technology in India, as well as the right to develop 1,000 MW of solar thermal projects in the next 10 years (see Solar sell-off accelerates). Acme said last month that it's on schedule to commission part of its first 10-MW solar thermal plant in Rajasthan in the first quarter of next year (see Acme plans to beat eSolar on cost of solar thermal in India).

However, eSolar's deal with Princeton, N.J.-based NRG Energy (NYSE:NRG) does not include an exclusivity clause, leaving eSolar to develop its own power plants or sell licenses to developers in North America.

In February, NRG paid $10 million for an equity stake and the rights to develop three projects for which eSolar had PPAs: a 92-MW plant for El Paso Electric in New Mexico, a 92-MW plant for Northern California’s PG&E, and a 245-MW plant under a PPA with Southern California Edison (see NRG Energy, eSolar sign 500 MW solar deal). NRG plans to begin construction on the New Mexico project next summer.

Rogan said part of the appeal of Fluor was the company's extensive experience in engineering, procurement and construction.

In 2007, China's LDK Solar contracted Fluor to design and engineer a $1.2 billion polysilicon plant in Xinyu City (see LDK Solar building $1B polysilicon plant). In 2008, Fluor received the contract to build the plant, expected to be the world's largest polysilicon facility when it goes into production this year, according to Fluor.

Fluor and Airtricity, which has since been acquired by Scottish and Southern Energy, launched the 500-MW Greater Gabbard Offshore Wind project off the Suffolk coast of the United Kingdom (see UK approves Greater Gabbard wind farm). Fluor began offshore construction this summer, with the first turbines expected to be operational in 2009 and all turbines by late 2010. When complete, the project is expected to be the world’s largest offshore wind farm (see Scottish and Southern signs $3B in wind contracts). 

"Our internal resources are limited compared to a company like Fluor," Rogan said.

Last year, eSolar raised a $130 million round from Idealab, Google and Oak Investment Partners (see Going modular with eSolar). It has 135 employees.

The cost of building a solar powered economy

— The road to Death Valley from Highway 95 winds through Southern Nevada’s version of farm country.

From the highway, scraggly brush and shuttered bars mask the view of neon green alfalfa growing along dusty side roads. It’s easy to miss the farms entirely — until approaching a small casino that sits near the Nevada state line.

Longstreet Casino’s most recognizable feature, sitting under a windmill, is a giant stucco cow sometimes called “Big Bovine.” Inside the casino, in a large ballroom of the mostly empty building, locals heard a pitch in May for a project that could change the scene outside profoundly.

The presentation came from Jason Higgins, a representative of the Spain-based company Solar Millennium, which wants to build a massive solar plant nearby.

 

Solar Millennium wants to build a plant that uses water to cool steam into liquid, like a giant swamp cooler. A water-based system would be cheaper and more efficient than the kind of dry cooling many natural gas plants use in the water-deficient desert — fans inside warehouse-like structures.

Higgins, a water surveyor from Las Vegas with big oval eyes set against a square face, was hired to answer a question: Can the company secure enough water rights in the Amargosa Valley to sustain the kind of solar power plant that draws heavily from the aquifer?

“It’s confusing because there are so many opinions of water in this area,” Higgins said to a skeptical couple who demanded to know whether the solar plants would suck the region dry. “I don’t have the answers,” he said. Yet.

Solar Millennium’s more formal public meetings start this week — hearings likely to be repeated by other solar prospectors looking for sites across Southern Nevada. Dozens of developers in the region are involved in the tricky process of winning government approval and finding the capital to build vast plants to harness the sun for energy on federal lands.

Even as momentum from the highest reaches of government builds, touting solar energy as one key source to wean the country off fossil fuels, Solar Millennium and other companies know that solar comes with a set of problems similar to those any massive development project would encounter in Southern Nevada — the need for water, power lines, capital and an accepting public.

The Bureau of Land Management has carved out 670,000 acres of federal land across the West for solar power, including 32,000 acres in Amargosa Valley. (This doesn’t cover Solar Millennium’s proposed site.) The BLM is studying those zones for the purpose of giving energy companies guidelines about locations where they can cluster projects. Run transmission lines around that land and entrepreneurs can be expected to fill them with mirrors or photovoltaic arrays.

Suddenly a clean economy, and the so called promise of “green jobs” in construction and plant maintenance, begins to form.

That’s how it looks on a map.

But solar developers here and across Southern Nevada have run into logistical problems, including tower interference with Nellis Test and Training Range, a lack of suitable transmission lines, and opposition from local conservationists who don’t want to see the desert torn up for solar plants — not to mention a credit market that still has not shaken loose.

Those nitty-gritty details are playing out in such places as this 500-square-mile stretch of desert south of Beatty running roughly from U.S. Highway 95 down the California border where about 1,500 people live and where 18 companies have active applications to transform federal lands for energy generation.

Plus, there’s the issue of water.

‘Beautiful flat land’

The view from the ballroom window where Higgins made his presentation in May included the same vista that Hank and Robert Records saw in 1950 when they drove through the valley for the first time — desert framed by mountains.

“That beautiful flat land. Something should be done with it,” Hank Records exclaimed, according to a local history book. Years later, his brother Robert joked, “That’s when they should’ve put us in a straitjacket.” Instead, the brothers applied for land under the Desert Land Act.

Farming was the first hope. A railroad that ran through the area was the first to start a large-scale operation. The Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad’s ranch was supposed to demonstrate that the desolate valley could become something else, that ground water pulled up through wells could yield abundant fruits and vegetables. The idea was for homesteaders to fill the area with farms and ship their products on the railroads.

Persuading people to move to such a remote, dry location turned out to be a tough sell. Few farmers came. Those who did weren’t able to make much money farming in the valley.

“My dad always said you can make a living here, but not enough to leave,” said Shelley Kadrmas, who as town secretary runs Amargosa Valley’s affairs from an office in the back of the high school gymnasium.

In 1993 Ponderosa Dairy moved in, owned by the California-based Rockview Farms. Its accompanying lot ballooned to more than 11,000 cows and 7,000 calves. The dairy delivers wholesale organic and nonorganic milk in Nevada and California.

Manager Michael Kwiatkowski says it’s the largest agricultural operation in Southern Nevada, and the area’s biggest employer.

Most of the farmers now sell to the dairy or lease their land directly to the dairy to grow alfalfa to feed the animals.

Still, the valley has never lived up to the expectations of the people who moved there. It has expanded and contracted based on temporary work in nearby mines or the Nevada Test Site. Nearly all of the homes are portable.

“It’s temporary out here and it’s always been that way,” Kadrmas said one afternoon, as teachers at the local school laid out plastic hula dancers and Hawaiian flower-printed crepe paper for an end-of-year potluck that was dreamily given a beach luau theme.

As Michael DeLee, whose family owns part of what was the railroad’s ranch and who runs a real estate business in the area, explains: “Amargosa Valley is always waiting for its ship to come in.”

Indeed, many of the vast circles of alfalfa or the pistachios or trees bearing pomegranates are, in reality, almost water dumps. Landowners use the water so they don’t lose their water rights, which they hope can be converted into something much more valuable because in Nevada, water rights can be bought and sold separately from the land.

To retain their rights, farmers must farm once every five years. So at least every five years, land owners dutifully break out their irrigation systems to water large circular tracts — hoping that someday they’ll be approached with a better deal.

“It wasn’t my intention originally to invest in water rights, but like the owner of any property, you dream about this or that,” said Bill DeWitt, a businessman from California who owns a large stretch of on-again off-again alfalfa fields on land called Funeral Mountain Ranch.

Then DeWitt gave a nod to reality. “You have a horse and it might be a good horse but then it gets a broken leg and what are you going to do? Life is that way.”

The latest broken horse is Yucca Mountain. With its proximity, investors for years assumed the project would be a boon to the area.

DeWitt began acquiring property in 1989, two years after the federal government settled on Yucca Mountain as the site for a national nuclear waste dump.

“I thought it would be like the Hoover Dam project, with thousands of employees,” DeWitt said. Those people would need places to live and shop, he thought.

“I was wrong.”

DeWitt and others now hope solar power will succeed where other ideas failed.

Like all big water holders here, for most of the last year, DeWitt has had solar developers stop by asking to lease or buy his water rights. He’s been in close negotiations with Solar Millennium.

DeWitt said he is waiting to see what “pans out” before he makes a final deal.

Tale of the pupfish

On a July day in Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Cristi Baldino stood at the edge of Kings Pool at Ash Meadows. The pool was as blue as the Caribbean and so clear she had an unadulterated view to the bottom.

Baldino’s Fish and Wildlife Services cap topped a short, red bob and a cheerfully dimpled face as she explained that in cooler weather, this is the spot where she lingers, mesmerized by the rambunctious Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish in the pool.

“Look at them playing and chasing each other,” Baldino said. “It’s a very soothing experience.”

She pointed to a yellow flower — the Ash Meadows gumplant.

The area is home to life forms that exist only here, a wet spot in the middle of the desert — at least 24 plants and animals.

Little bubbles float to the top of the spring, as gallons of underground water spurt to the surface and down the swirling streams from here. “A lot of people see the water and have the concept it’s endless, but it’s not,” Baldino said.

Hanging in the Fish and Wildlife Service’s bungalow here is a photo from decades ago showing two cars, one with a bumper sticker saying “Kill the Pupfish” and the other, “Save the Pupfish.”

One type of pupfish — the Devil’s Hole pupfish — live in a small crevice adjacent to Ash Meadows that provides a rare view of the underground aquifer in Amargosa Valley. Divers have gone down 500 feet but don’t know how much deeper the water runs because they haven’t been able to dive that far.

The Devil’s Hole pupfish breed along the ledge and because the conditions there are so rare, scientists have never been able to recreate them. Those pupfish have been a source of tension between the residents and the federal government for decades, ever since the discovery that pumping ground water nearby threatened the pupfish.

The locals don’t come a lot to see the pupfish, Baldino said, but attorneys from far away do. They visit to see the pupfish that caused a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1976 giving the National Park Service the right to stop pumping of the aquifer because it endangered the creatures.

Dry or wet system?

Solar Millennium submitted its updated plan to the BLM late last year. The company wants to build two 242-megawatt concentrated solar plants with mirrors taking up 4,000 acres on desert shrub along Farm Road, the main route through what passes for a “downtown” in Amargosa Valley.

The company’s site would be just 1 1/2 miles from the town’s community center, school, library and helipad. It would be less than 20 miles from Devil’s Hole and Ash Meadows. Solar Millennium’s application said it chose the site “due to its excellent solar radiation, access to existing electric transmission corridors, and access to skilled labor and other industrial infrastructure in nearby Las Vegas.”

The application said the company wasn’t sure whether it will build a dry system or a wet system. The difference is staggering.

A wet system would require 2,000 acre-feet of water a year for each of the two plants (an acre-foot of water is equal to roughly 325,000 gallons).

A dry system would require just 10 percent of that. But a dry system is expected to cost 5 percent to 10 percent more to build, and would produce about 20 percent less electricity on the hottest days, developers say.

“The primary potential water source is diversion of agricultural water from existing, active wells near the periphery of the proposed project,” the application states. In other words, the company is going to try to buy or lease water rights allocated to farmers in the area.

Project developer Don Reid translated it this way: “We’re not going to increase water usage in the basin,” he said. “We’re just going to switch it from growing alfalfa to growing megawatts.”

Here’s the problem: The state’s water engineer, Tracy Taylor, says the basin in the area has 24,000 acre-feet of water available each year, of which 17,600 is actively used.

The Park Service contends that if the allocated water rights are fully used every year, the aquifer couldn’t keep up with the demand, said Jennifer Beck, a hydrologist for the Park Service who has looked closely at renewable energy issues.

If solar developers, who parks officials say theoretically want to pump 50,000 acre-feet a year from the aquifer, buy or lease most of the water rights, they will severely deplete the aquifer, the park service said in a letter to BLM this year.

“We support solar but we would just want to recognize that each area has different constraints that should be considered,” Beck said. “The Amargosa desert we would suggest is an area where wet cooled is not the best technology.”

“What I would envision is greatly decreasing water levels, and there is a concern that if the water levels decline significantly in the vicinity (of) Ash Meadows and Devil’s Hole and the area in Devils Hole where the pupfish actually spawn, it wouldn’t take very much to dry that up.”

A few weeks ago, the town of Amargosa Valley asserted its own “vision statement” in a plan it wants Nye County to approve.

The valley “will strive to maintain a rural atmosphere, open spaces, green belts and agriculture, while encouraging controlled growth and safe industries in support of economic diversification,” the plan states. “Growth and development should not come at the expense of the qualities that make the valley special or diminish its natural resources.”

‘It’s an industrial process’

Brian Brown is a date farmer across the border in California and the resource advocate for the Amargosa Conservancy, a local conservation group. He has strong views about using desert land in the area for solar power.

“It’s being passed off as a very simple story of federal land that we want to lease to provide green power for America, and there’s nothing bad about that except it’s an industrial process, and if it was anything other than solar, people would be going, ‘hell no,’ ” he said while walking around his palm-tree laden farm recently.

“If it was a gas or a coal fired plant right in the middle of town, what would they say? They want to come in and sterilize the desert and build a 70,000-acre parking lot. Do we want to spend the rest of our lives staring at miles and miles of solar panels?”

National environmental groups counter such claims by arguing that large-scale solar plants will replace coal-fired power sources, curtailing the gases that contribute to global warming and threaten far more than patches of desert.

As the controversy goes on, some solar developers are not even trying secure water rights for wet cooling. Abengoa Solar recently introduced a plan for a dry-cooled system next to U.S. 95 on a strip of desert it says was paved over for an airstrip. What that company is most concerned about is securing transmission lines.

Ed Goedhart, Amargosa Valley’s conservative Republican assemblyman, believes the valley needs a boost. He split with many of his constituents by opposing the Yucca Mountain project, and then became a solar power evangelist.

“The thing I like about solar is that the sun isn’t going to call us up and say, ‘My rays are going to double in price in the next six months,” Goedhart said in an interview last spring. “You’re locked into this energy source and it isn’t going to be controlled by market manipulators or other countries. It’s a fixed cost.”

Lately, however, Goedhart has grown pessimistic about its chances in the valley.

“If you look at the risks involved, all the hurdles, the sun the moon the stars all have to line up in perfect alignment,” he said recently. “It’s so complex, so burdensome. I think it would be a miracle to get one plant built.”