What is the best evidence that concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) aka solar baseload is indeed a core climate solution with big near-term — and very big medium-term — promise? One of the country’s biggest companies, Lockheed-Martin, with 2008 sales of $42.7 billion, has jumped into the race to build the biggest CSP plant with thermal storage.
The CSP market was already exploding (see “World’s largest solar plant with thermal storage to be built in Arizona “” total of 8500 MW of this core climate solution planned for 2014 in U.S. alone“). Now big players are getting on board, as Phoenix’s East Valley Tribune reports:
Arizona Public Service, Starwood Energy Group Global and Lockheed Martin announced plans Friday to build one of the world’s largest solar plants in the Harquahala Valley about 75 miles west of Phoenix.
The 290-megawatt plant will produce enough electricity to power more than 73,000 homes when it is completed in 2013, the developers said,
Called Starwood Solar I, the plant will be financed and owned by an affiliate of Starwood Energy and built and operated by Lockheed Martin. APS has agreed to take all of the electricity generated at the plant for distribution to its customers.
The plant will include 3,500 parabolic mirrors that will focus the sun’s heat onto tubes containing a heat-transfer fluid. The hot fluid will convert water into steam that will turn the plant’s turbines to generate electricity.
The Starwood plant is the second major solar project spurred by APS. In February 2008 the company signed an agreement with Abengoa Solar of Spain to purchase power from a 280-megawatt plant the Spanish company plans to build by 2011 at Gila Bend. But Abengoa has had trouble lining up financing for that project, and construction has not yet started.
APS is required by the Arizona Corporation Commission to obtain 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025. The utility said it will be ahead of schedule to meet that requirement if Solana and Starwood are built.
First, I hope that the Department of Energy is going to use its loan program to help CSP companies like Abengoa get financing for CSP during this credit crunch (see “First Energy Department loan guarantee goes to “¦ a solar manufacturer“).
But that is precisely why it is such a big deal for a company like Lockheed-Martin to enter this space. They bring credibility and confidence to potential financiers who might otherwise worry about the long-term viability of some relatively new and relatively small solar company.
And in case you were wondering who this mysterious Starwood Energy Group is, they are “a private equity investment firm based in Greenwich, CT, that specializes in energy infrastructure investments.” Apparently they have deep pockets: “Founded in 2005, Starwood Energy has committed to seven transactions representing nearly $4.9 billion in enterprise value.” Yes, this is the Starwood in Starwood hotels — the Chairman and CEO, Barry Sternlicht was “was Chairman & CEO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., a company he founded in 1995.” Gizmag reports that “Principals at Starwood Energy and its affiliates have developed or acquired 37 power generation and transmission projects to date, valued at more than USD$12 billion.” Be interested to know who those “affiliates” are, since it looks like these folks are going to be serious investors in clean energy.
When big players enter the market, there is the real prospect for lower financing and transaction and engineering costs.
Significantly, this plant will have thermal storage:
Solar I will be designed and built by aeronautics giant Lockheed Martin on about 1,900 acres, using a concentrating solar power system. This use mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Solar I will have 3,500 parabolic mirrors to capture the sun’s rays. Heat captured by the mirrors and transferred will be used to convert water into steam. Just like a traditional power plant, the steam is then used to drive the plant’s turbines to create electricity. By storing energy captured during the day, up to six hours of back-up power will be available in a molten salt solution.
The key point is that the easiest way to deal with the intermittency of the sun is cheap storage “” and thermal storage is much cheaper and has a much higher round-trip efficiency than electric storage. The ability to provide power reliably throughout the day and evening in key locations around the world (including China and India) is why CSP delivers 3 of the 12 – 14 wedges needed for “the full global warming solution.”
Kudos to Lockheed-Martin for getting onboard this fast-moving train.
Related Posts:
- World’s largest solar power plants with thermal storage to be built in Arizona
- Biggest CA utility contracts for world’s biggest solar power deal “” 1300 MW solar thermal
- World’s second* largest solar plant to be built in Florida
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Just six hours of back-up storage. It is possible to use molten salt to create several days of back-up storage, but apparently that is not economically feasible yet. I would think that several days of storage is needed to make it real base-load power.
[JR: Remember, there really is no economic value in generating electricity from, say, 2 am to 6 am. We have way too much of that, and that is also when wind is strong.]
Charles,
CSP is baseload power. Right now 6 hours is the best that can be done with the Spanish working on techniques to squeeze out 8 hours. They believe it can be extended to as much as 10 or 12 hours. Successful CSP is like successful wind turbine generated power. It’s all in the proper sighting of these facilities and getting a smart grid to route power sources when supply drops. CSP would be more gradual.
That’s where proper sighting comes in. The sun doesn’t get blocked everywhere so there will always be CSP plants on line. They also will not be alone in producing power. There will be wind turbines, cogenerating plants, and homes and businesses will have the ability to have their power managed intelligently where powere is produced and power use shutdown when this power consumption is not needed in an intelligent grid.
Charles, I don’t know that it’s necessarily not economically feasible so much as not economically sensible at this time for this location. Phoenix gets the bulk of it’s base-load power from a the country’s biggest nuke and several big coal plants near the four corners that are bought and paid for. While the accounting may be done differently, the reality is that Phoenix gets coal power from the four corners from the east and the nuke ships most of it’s power west to California. With fast population growth, the power issues here are keeping up with peak summer daytime demand, currently handled at thin margins by natural gas plants scattered around the valley. The ability to ship more power to California is restricted by the grid. With little continuous heavy industrial demand in Arizona, and the inability to get power to California, I can’t imagine the cost of power at night justifying the additional cost of long term storage. This plant would be near Palo Verde, and it won’t be able to generate much money at night, when the incremental cost of power from Palo Verde is virtually zero. Not to mention that APS would just be competing with their own nuke. I think this says more about the current needs of the Valley of the Sun and the southwest than it does about the feasibility of concentrated solar storage.
This slide-show presentation on the 340-MW Hualapai Valley Solar Project
http://www.mitchelldong.com/Index.html
says 6–8 hours of thermal storage (#34) will cost about $200 million (#30) — almost 10% of the $2.1 billion total.
The Palo Verde Nuclear Plant in Arizona contains three 1270 MW reactors (not sure if all are operating) built on the arc of a circle that was originally conceived for twelve. Even with this reduction from the original concept, the makeup cooling water for the plant is supplied from Phoenix sewage via a 50 mile pipeline. This effluent is processed at the plant, which is some 4,000 acres overall. One wonders where these hundreds of megawatts of solar thermal will acquire their coolant water since the desert southwest may get even dryer with climate change.
Rick makes a good point about the smart grid. It will change the notion of how much storage is needed.
Need lots more solar thermal in the southwest for desalination and pumping.
James Newberry,
Read my guest blog on CP from about six weeks ago on the decades-long experience with dry cooling technologies for Rankine-cycle power plants. Cooling water is no barrier to CSP. Palo Verde could have used it as well, but we were a lot more profligate with ground water when that was built.
ENERGY AND CURRENCY
The Oil Industry is basically “dead in the water” when it comes to supporting renewable energy, despite the millions already invested and to be invested toward that goal. Here is an example of the thinking of the oil industry:
My application for a 3 million dollar the Solar Furnace CHP System pilot plant has been approved for comprehensive merit evaluation by NETL of DOE. The gap in the application is not technical, but economic. I lack the one million dollars plus, as matching funds as required by the FOA. I approached CHS Foundation, sponsored by CHS which is a Fortune 200 company selling farm supplies and owns CENEX. The Solar Furnace is a system which can power medium sized farms, factories, and campuses at between 3 and 5 cents per kW/hr. I had asked CHSF for a letter of commitment in support of my grant application. The request was rejected as the project is “not in the corporate interest”.
CHS has the money to easily fund the million plus. More over, I offered CHSF a perpetual, world-wide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to all of the technology. CHS is petro-chemical based and will ride the wave of oil price increases surely to come. CHS is run by bean counters and thus they maintain the status quo.
What we need to do is to develop alternative energy systems, especially concentrated solar power (CSP) at the small, highly distributed end of the market. We need to drive the oil industry down their well bore holes. That effort takes capital money because we need to turn our intellectual capital into physical capital.
There is a solution, namely formation of a global credit union with a subsidiary to furnish the 50% equity to match the other 50% loan from the CU. Thus we need a creative method of financing. I have a lead on just such a project and have read the entire prospectus. My law and engineering background will come in handy if and when we form a global credit union and “equity union”. We will need investors, IT folks, marketing types, admin’s (no bean counters in the loop unless kept on a short leash), engineers and lawyers and an outside CPA to do the annual audits. We need money to fight the “evil empire” of oil moguls. Anyone interested in helping this funding project along, send me a private email.
Jim Miller
jimmiller5417 -at-yahoo.com
Dear,
we are intewrested to make with your company a joint venture.We have big land. and finance.
thanks
Roland Moesle