First Solar employees work on the solar power station in Blythe, Calif.
(Credit: First Solar)Solar module maker First Solar on Monday opened the largest photovoltaic solar power station in California, which the company plans to replicate in order to expand its utility business.
The plant in Blythe, Calif., which First Solar purchased from energy developer NRG, will have the capacity to generate 21 megawatts of electricity, or enough to power about 17,000 homes. It will supply electricity to Southern California Edison under a 20-year purchase power agreement.
It's one of a number of projects that First Solar is pursuing as it seeks to expand in the utility-scale solar business. A deal to build a 48-megawatt plant in California to supply Pacific Gas & Electric was approved last week. "The development, project finance and construction of this solar plant demonstrate First Solar's capabilities in utility scale projects," Bruce Sohn, president of First Solar, said in a statement.
First Solar's panels, which use thin film solar cells made from cadmium telluride, are considered the lowest cost solar panel in the industry. The company's relatively low cost and the technology's track record make it attractive to utilities that need to meet the California renewable energy mandate.
eSolar on Tuesday said that it will build solar thermal power plants that will make 245 megawatts of electricity for Southern California Edison.
The plants will be built in the Antelope Valley of Southern California and begin operating in 2011.
Coming to California: eSolar's heliostat and thermal receiver-based solar power plants.
(Credit: eSolar)The company, created by Idealabs and funded by Google.org, makes utility-scale concentrating solar power systems with a modular design.
Software-controlled heliostats, or mirrors, reflect light onto a tower where the heat turns water to steam that turns a turbine.
The company raised $130 million in April.
California is a hotbed for utility-scale solar power because the state has relatively aggressive renewable energy targets.
The state's renewable portfolio standard mandates that utilities generate 20 percent of their electricity by 2010 and 33 percent by 2012.
In desert areas like parts of Southern California, concentrating solar thermal technology has become the preferred renewable energy source.
eSolar's technology, however, is a break with the traditional reflective trough now used in a number of power plants around the world.
eSolar says that its heliostat and thermal receiver design cuts down on costs in different areas such as using prefabricated heliostats.
When it comes to solar these days, it's go big or go home.
Utilities are being pushed to use more renewable energy, heating up the business of large-scale solar power. (Click here for related photo gallery.)
There are competing designs for utility-scale solar farms. By concentrating light to make steam, some designs use heat to generate electricity. In parallel, other companies concentrate light onto photovoltaic cells to generate electricity.
Click on the image to view a photo gallery of different utility-scale solar technologies.
(Credit: Schott)The latter, known as concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) systems, may make more sense in a broader set of geographies, compared with concentrating solar thermal. Both forms of concentrating solar power are meant to improve on sun-tracking flat panels.
Which technological approach will win out isn't clear yet, but the demand for centralized solar-power generation systems is there.
Prometheus Institute forecasts that 50 gigawatts of electricity could be generated this way by 2020. Currently, there 430 megawatts worth of concentrating solar power systems installed around the world, according to Emerging Energy Research.
California and Spain are the biggest markets for these concentrating solar power systems. If renewable portfolio standards get passed in more states, we could see a much greater diversity of technologies beyond the solar trough and solar tower.
The Prometheus Institute, in a report published by Greentech Media, forecasts that concentrating photovoltaic technologies will be used in midsize to large power plants that range from about 1 megawatt of production to about 100 megawatts.
Concentrating solar thermal systems, meanwhile, will dominate very large centralized power generation.
(Credit:
Prometheus Institute/Greentech Media)
Update on May 27: added that Greentech Media is publisher of concentrating solar power report.
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