Tessara Plans 500MW Solar Project

It's no Sahara solar project, but we'll take what we can get. Tessera Solar Plans 500MW Solar Thermal Power in Riverside County, California.

Tessera said it's teaming up with Optiflex Properties & Development on developing and financing the power plants, which would be located on closed landfills and undeveloped properties, said Janette Coates, a spokeswoman for Tessera.

Tessera announced the project earlier this week, about two weeks after it said it would build a 27-megawatt solar project in Texas and sell the power to CPS Energy, which is run by the city of San Antonio.

Building 500 megawatts would require about 3,500 acres, she said. Tessera and Optiflex are scouting for ideal locations in Riverside for erecting Stirling Energy Systems' SunCatcher equipment.

A SunCatcher is made up of a giant parabolic dish of mirrors (40 feet across) to concentrate the sun onto a receiver called a "power conversion unit (PCU)." Sunlight heats up the hydrogen gas in tubes in the PCU, and the gas goes through a heat exchanger to run a four-cylinder Stirling engine. The engine then drives a generator to produce electricity.

Stirling Energy Systems (SES) recently unveiled a newly designed SunCatcher that it said would be easy to mass produce and maintain than its first-generation design.

The history of Stirling engines goes back to 1816, when Robert Stirling in Scotland designed the first machine and built it two years later to pump water from a quarry.

The companies plan to start construction between 2010 and 2012.

- Brewskie

Lockheed War Titans to Build 290 MW Arizona Solar Thermal Plant

Looks like Lockheed Martin is actually good for stuff other than building bombs to wreck Iraq. This will be its first solar thermal project.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin is building its first large-scale solar power plant -- a $1.5 billion, 290-megawatt solar thermal plant about 75 miles west of Phoenix.

Under the deal announced Friday, Lockheed will build and operate the plant for developer Starwood Energy Group, which has a contract to sell the power to utility Arizona Public Service Co. when it is complete in 2013.

It's the first project under a Lockheed/Starwood partnership first announced in 2007, aimed at marrying Starwood's deep pockets and project expertise and Lockheed's experience in space-based photovoltaic applications to bring utility-scale solar power projects to Earth.

[...]

BrightSource uses a "power tower" design -- a field of mirrors, or heliostats, to concentrate the sunlight and heat the water atop of a central tower to make steam to power a turbine. Its first plant, a 110-megawatt solar thermal station in Ivanpah, Calif., is set to begin construction in 2010 and begin operation in 2012.

Lockheed, on the other hand, will use a parabolic trough design, using 3,000 100-meter reflective troughs to focus sunlight on fluid-containing tubes that carry the heated fluid to a heat exchanger to generate steam (see Solar Thermal: Which Technology Is Best?).

California's investor-owned utilities like PG&E and Edison are under a state mandate to include 20 percent of its power mix with renewable electricity. Arizona Public Service also has a mandate to provide 4.5 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2014.

- Brewskie

Sweet Blazin' Lights - 1.3 Gigawatts of Solar (Yes, Gigawatts)!

(Hat tip: Peak Energy) The bright prophecy of solar in America's southwest is just starting to bear fruit. The largest solar deal ever inked: a deal between the utility Southern California Edison, and solar power plant maker, BrightSource, for 1.3 gigawatts of solar installations - more juice than even the largest nuke plant. The deal calls for solar thermal power as opposed to conventional photovoltaic; solar thermal concentrates the sun's rays to create steam in a boiler to turn a turbine.

More detail from the Wired magazine article:

The momentous deal will deliver more electricity than even the largest nuclear plant, spread out among seven facilities, the first of which will start up in 2013. When fully operational, the companies say the facility will provide enough electricity to power 845,000 homes — more than exist in San Francisco — though estimates like that are notoriously squirrely.

[...]

The new deal breaks the company's own record for the largest ever solar deal. The new installations, when completed, will produce 3.7 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year. Previously, they'd cut a deal to deliver 900 megawatts of power to the Northern California utility, PG&E.

[...]

The 1980s-era solar thermal plants use the oldest solar thermal technology around, known as a parabolic trough. Mirrors shaped like a paper-towel roll cut in half concentrate the sun's rays on a liquid. That heat can be transformed into various types of energy. The Luz fields made electricity, but Frank Shuman built a plant based on this principle to pump water in Egypt in the first decade of the 20th century.

The new design sounds more exciting. Mirrors that track the sun — heliostats — sit in a massive field around a tower with a boiler. All those mirrors concentrate the sun's heat on the boiler, which makes steam and drives a turbine.

Blazin'

- Brewskie