IN THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
Indian summer for solar power
The push for green energy resurfaces with renewed vigour in California.
- By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
- Published: 00:14 January 3, 2009
- Mirrors reflect sunlight on to water-filled pipes, which creates steam and, ultimately, electricity at a facility near Bakersfield in California
- Image Credit: Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times
Just up the road, past pump jacks bobbing in California's storied oil patch, look sharp and you will catch a glimpse of the state's energy future.
Rows of gigantic mirrors covering an area bigger than two football fields have sprouted alongside almond groves near Highway 99. This is a power plant that uses the Sun's heat to produce electricity for thousands of homes.
Owned by Palo Alto-based Ausra Incorporated, it is the first so-called solar thermal facility to open in California in nearly two decades.
It is part of a drive to build clean electricity generation using the sun, wind and other renewable sources with an urgency not seen since the days of environmentalist governor Jerry Brown.
Add in President-elect Barack Obama's stated intention to push for more renewable power and you have the equivalent of a green land rush.
At least 80 large solar projects are on the drawing board in California, more than in any other state. The scale of some is unrivalled on the planet.
“The expectation is that renewables will transform California's electricity system,'' said Terry O'Brien, who helps vet sites for new facilities for the California Energy Commission.
Despite America's toughest mandates for boosting green energy and reducing greenhouse gases, California remains addicted to burning fossil fuels to keep the lights on.
Less than 12 per cent of the state's electricity came from renewable sources in 2007, according to the commission. Solar power ranked last, supplying just 0.2 per cent of California's needs.
Proponents say utility-scale solar panels is a way to get lots of clean megawatts quickly, efficiently and at lower cost.
Solar thermal plants, such as Ausra's, essentially are giant boilers made of glass and steel. They use the Sun's heat to create steam to power turbines that generate electricity.
Costing about 18 cents a kilowatt-hour at present, solar thermal power is roughly 40 per cent cheaper than that generated by the silicon-based panels that sit on the roofs of homes and businesses, according to a June report by Clean Edge Incorporated and the Co-op American Foundation.
Analysts say improved technology and economies of scale should help lower the cost of solar thermal power to about 5 cents a kilowatt-hour by 2025.
Size matters, says Sun Microsystems Incorporated co-founder-turned-venture-capitalist Vinod Khosla, whose Khosla Ventures has invested more than $30 million in Ausra.
“Utility-scale solar [farms are] probably the only way to achieve real scale ... and reduce carbon emissions'' significantly, Khosla said.
Critics fear massive solar farms would create as many environmental problems as they purport to solve.
Solar plants require staggering amounts of land, which could threaten fragile ecosystems and mar the stark beauty of America's deserts.
“They are trying to perpetuate the old Big Energy paradigm into the renewable-energy era,'' said Sheila Bowers, a Santa Monica attorney and environmental activist. “They have a monopoly agenda.''
California already boasts the largest operating collection of solar thermal facilities in the world: nine plants totalling just over 350 megawatts in San Bernardino County.
Built in the 1980s, the nine existing plants were part of a drive towards energy self-sufficiency stemming from the oil shocks of the 1970s. The boom ended when California dropped requirements forcing utilities to buy renewable power.
The push is back. The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is juggling so many requests from companies looking to construct on federal land that it had to stop accepting applications for a few weeks last summer.
Many of the facilities may never be built. US credit markets are in a deep freeze. Oil and natural gas prices are falling, reducing some of the urgency to go green.
Still, the obstacles have not slowed the ambitions of solar start-ups such as Ausra.
“Our investors perceive there is a huge opportunity here,'' said Bob Fishman, Ausra's president and chief executive.
The company uses a technology known as a compact linear Fresnel reflector. Acres of mirrors are anchored to metal frames and suspended roughly 6 feet off the ground in parallel rows.
These panels make hundreds of barely perceptible movements throughout the day, tracking the Sun's path across the sky.
The mirrors reflect the Sun's rays on to a cluster of water pipes suspended overhead. The heat — it can reach 750 degrees celsius — generates pressurised steam inside the pipes, which is then fed into a turbine that generates electricity.
Despite its mammoth size, this pilot plant generates a modest amount of electricity, enough to power just 3,500 homes. Ausra is thinking much bigger.
Other companies looking to shine in California with utility-scale plants include Solel Incorporated, whose proposed 553-megawatt project in the Mojave Desert would span about 25 square kilometres; BrightSource Energy Incorporated of Oakland; OptiSolar Incorporated of Hayward, California; and FPL Energy of Juno Beach, Florida.
“Climate change is the greatest challenge mankind has ever faced,'' said Peter Darbee, president and chief executive of Pacific Gas & Electric and head of its parent, San Francisco-based PG&E Corporation.
“It's imperative to seek out the most cost-effective solutions.''
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