SOLAR: MORE, BIGGER, BETTER

The California utility giant PG&E exemplifies what happens when a state has a Renewable Electricty Standard (RES) and a utility is committed to meet it. California’s RES requires its utilities to obtain 20% of their power by 2010 (including contracts through 2013). PG&E already gets 14% of its power from New Energy. It has contracted for 1931 megawatts of electricity from solar, wind, wave and geothermal sources since 2007, thereby stimulating development by a myriad of worthy companies and exceeding its RES requirement.

California’s policy mandates have sparked enormous development and brought huge investment revenues into the state. In addition to the 900 megawatts of solar energy PG&E is buying from BrightSource Energy, as described below, the last week has also seen Southern California Edison (SCE) announce an $875 million investment in 250-megawatts of solar installations for 65 million square feet of commercial buildings and FPL Energy, subsidiary of the FPL Group, announce its 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project power plant on 2,000 acres in Kern County, expected to be operational by 2011.

Why is this important? John Woolard, President/CEO, BrightSource Energy: "These are exciting times for the industry…Really, the challenge is that there needs to be hundreds of plants like this one constructed, built and delivered. With the carbon issue, we've got to be able to do things at a size and scale that's meaningful."

With political leadership like California has had and utilities like PG&E, it just might be possible to beat this global climate change thing yet.

The solar power tower in practice. (click to enlarge)

PG&E makes huge solar deal; Utility Project Would Put Five Power Plants In Mojave Desert
Matt Nauman, April 1, 2008 (San Jose Mercury News)

WHO
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) (Jennifer Zerwer, spokeswoman); BrightSource Energy (John Woolard, President/CEO & Arnold Goldman, Founder/Chairman);

The solar power tower in theory. (click to enlarge)

WHAT
PG&E will build 5 new solar power plants, representing as much as 900 megawatts, using BrightSource distributed power tower (DPT) technology.

Another stunning view. (click to enlarge)

WHEN
- PG&E announced the new deals April 1.
- The demonstrating technology will be running in April.
- The first 100-megawatt plant is expected to be running in 2011.
- The second 200-megawatt plant is expected to be running in 2012-13.
- Three more 200-megawatt plants will be built between 2014 and 2016. the Broadwell dry lake

WHERE
- The demonstration plant will be in Israel’s Negev Desert.
- The 5 contracted plants will be in California’s Mojave desert.
- The 2nd plant will be on the Ivanpah dry-lake bed in California’s San Bernardino County.
- The last 3 plants will be on the Broadwell dry-lake bed.

Somebody had to do something with all that sun so they brought in some Israelis, people who know about sun. (click to enlarge)

WHY
- Cost for the 5 plants: $2 billion to $3 billion.
- The 5 plants will provide: 2,000 construction jobs, 1,000 plant-operating jobs.
- Goldman was behind Luz, the company that built the 9 SEGS Mojave Desert solar power plants in the 1980s.
- The BrightSource DPT concept: An array of small, flat mirrors (heliostats) that track the sun reflect onto water atop a tower, heating it to 550 degrees C. (1022 degrees F.). This creates steam that drives a turbine, generating electricity.
- PG&E also has a 553-megawatt solar power plant deal with Israel’s Solel for the Mojave Desert and a 117-megawatt deal with Palo Alto's Ausra for San Luis Obispo County.

PG&E also promotes plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) so it will need all that sun-generated electricity. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Woolard, President/CEO, BrightSource: "From what I know, this is the biggest commitment ever in the history of solar…It's a fairly significant undertaking on both sides…The upper Mojave has world-class sun…We focus a lot on sunshine."
- Jennifer Zerwer, spokeswoman, PG&E: "As we look to build our renewable portfolio, we know there are a wide variety of not just renewable sources, but also a wide variety of technologies available…"