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Solar Thermal Re: Solar Thermal
I checked and power power will be used locally. The demand is growing since Arizonia is still the fastest growing area in the USA. Utilities are seeing the mistake of natural gas peaking plants and nuclear with many shut downs. Last year along the power increases due to our triple reactors being down was over 300 million. Refueling took much longer than planned and uranium cost sky rocketed. Even with huge subsidies it's a loser. The entire Solar project hinges on continued renewable federal support at 30%, far lower than fossil fule and nuclear but much needed. the solar stacks Re: Solar Thermal
I was never a fan of the NG peaking model. It works, it's low cost, but it's short range thinking. Now it's time to pay for shortsightedness. Nuclear plants are baseload, period. Their license to print $$$ is based on maximum up-time, and demand over baseload. The $300MM figure is what caught my eye... Do you know that the US uses >$660 million worth of electricity *every day* So the increase you're discussing is less than 12 hours worth of electricity. Given the total budget we're talking about that's actually pretty reasonable... OK it's an overage, and that's bad, but they're not alone when it comes to going over-budget on a major overhaul. It's all in perspective. I still want to install solar-thermal panels at every powerplant nationwide. They all use border land, and that equates to millions of kilowatts of available energy, and easy access to the grid. Even if it only offsets 1% of the fuel that a plant consumes that's a nice chunk of energy! Re: Solar Thermal
Far be it for me to knock a CSP plant... I think it's great! I hope you see the benefit from it. Chances are the power has already been sold to the CA market in the form of an Advanced Power Purchase contract. But that's OK too. Truth is power is as fungible as currency, it just can't be banked. It just firms up the perception that CSP is a rock solid technology for the 21st century! I'm all for that! Re: Solar Thermal
Our other large area utility company just announced a large 250MW Solar Thermal plant coming soon, as long as they can get an extention of the 30% Federal Credit that has been cancelled 2 times so far. the solar stacks
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0221biz-solar0221.html Plant to brighten state's solar future$1 billion facility to be among world's largest
Ryan Randazzo
Arizona's solar-power supply is about to get a lot bigger.
A solar-energy plant planned near Gila Bend will be among the world's largest when it opens in 2011, Arizona Public Service Co. said Wednesday. If the solar-thermal plant passes upcoming regulatory and tax hurdles, it will be built and operated by a Spanish company. APS will buy all the electricity from the plant to supply its 1.1 million customers. Re: Solar Thermal
Just about $4/Watt in the 280MW utility scale range Can I interest any businesses in one or more $3/Watt systems, in the 50-400kW commercial building range... They certainly won't be the worlds largest, but I think they will earn the "World's most Flexible" title. Just askin'...
Re: Solar Thermal
From what I just heard last night from SRP at a meeting they held on a proposed rate hike. This plant has a few bidders already. There are about 5 companies joining in on the purchase and operation of this new plant. It sounds like the selection of the vendor will be soon and construction will start later this year and go on line on 2010. Land seems to be very low in this remote desert area. One person also mentioned a abandoned coal plant with grid, water and land ready to get reused for a similar project. That seems like great recycling to me. The 250kW range seems a little small for utilities. If they were smart they could start with 250 kW and keep adding each month until they have a large system all running with incremental cost to scale up or down. No long 2 years to go on line. You just never know.
the solar stacks Re: Solar Thermal
I'd like to take the tour! Not because I expect to learn anything about the facility that I don't already know, but to see what the visitors (if any) are actually taking away front the experience. Something bothers me with that picture and the numbers, the total mirror area seems like the ground area under panel, not the actual 'glass' area... but that's not really important, not when it can be spun away. But seriously, 15 +/- acres of Arizona desert... jstack, what would you say that'd cost? In my neck-o-the-woods (Fairfield County, CT), it would probably be in the low 7 figures, if you could find a plot that large... 8 figures would not be out of the question... Then again, in New Haven County I could likely find it for less than $1MM, but I really don't know what it cost APS / Solargenix. Is it possible that the land was less than $100,000? I also noted that the O&M costs were allocated at $30/MWH, that's almost as much as a coal plant charges for power on the open market. I realize it sounds like I'm poisoning my own interests here, but I can't seem to find any recent info since the press releases on 2006. Ormat is very hush-hush, they tried to get my collector designs back in May '06 through a third party... About the only info I have is that it cost $6.1MM to create the plant. It's a pilot, so that's really not that expensive. But I'm e really anxious to find out what is coming down the pipe since the initial contracts in 2003. Re: Solar Thermal
I wish it was my chance! The proposal fits nicely with what we're doing, but the "openness" of the RFP is dubious at best... There is a clause in the qualifications that they have demonstrated the operation of a similar plant of at least 25MW for at least 1 year. There aren't too many companies that can claim that right now. In fact, there is a table in the materials that lists the only 8 companies that they expect proposals from. I didn't see an 'other' designation. That's OK, I don't know if I could actually get my head around a 250MW plant at this time. Our systems are designed and optimized in the 250kW range... That's a factor of 1000. While I am absolutely certain we could produce the volume of collectors required, in a month or so, I don't know if our prime mover will scale by a factor of 10x in all three directions... Perhaps coupling our collectors to an existing large turbine would work for this model. New Forum Topics
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Solar Thermal projects have proven to be the best for large utilities. I have Solar PV panels at my home but for a large centrally located power system solar thermal is much better. They can even use the same sstem at night run by CNG or Hydrogen.
Some of the best project have been the LUZ plants in California and Solar Power Towers also in CA. In Arizona we just had a big utility, APS build a very modern Solar Thermal plant in Saguaro AZ. It was put into service on April 22. That's Earth Day , how perfect.
http://www.aps.com/_files/renewable/SP017SaguaroSolarTrough.pdf
Now our other large state power utility is looking for RFQ. This is your chance !
SRP is also part of a consortium of energy companies requesting proposals to build a solar thermal power plant. The proposed plant would generate 250 MW of electricity.
solar stacks