SOLAR POWER PLANT TO BE 5 TIMES BIGGER

Sempra to expand solar power plant near Boulder City; Expansion would provide electricity to serve 30,000 homes
Steve Green, April 15, 2009 (Las Vegas Sun)
and
Sempra Unit, First Solar Plan 48MW Nevada Solar Farm
Cassandra Sweet, April 15, 2009 (Dow Jones Newswires via Wall Street Journal)

SUMMARY
Sempra Energy subsidiary Sempra Generation of San Diego will add Copper Mountain, a 48-megawatt photovoltaic (PV) solar power plant, to El Dorado, its 10-megawatt PV solar plant near Boulder City, Nevada.

The El Dorado facility went online in January and has performed well enough to justify Sempra’s enormous expansion. First Solar, the company that did the thin-film photovoltaic panels for El Dorado, will also do the Copper Mountain project.

El Dorado works and will therefore go from 10 megawatts to 58 megawatts. (click to enlarge)

The 58-megawatt facility will be the biggest PV solar plant in North America. The nearby 64-megawatt Acciona Energy facility uses “concentrating” solar energy technology. PV technology turns the sun’s light into electricity whereas “concentrating” solar energy technology turns the sun’s heat into mechanical power that drives turbines to create electricity.

El Dorado will have nearly a million First Solar thin-film PV panels. Construction will begin when Sempra Generation concludes a power purchase agreement (PPA) for the plant’s increased output.

Acciona Energy's 64-megawatt solar power plant uses concentrating technology to turn the sun's heat into electricity. (click to enlarge)

COMMENTARY
Like El Dorado, the Copper Mountain solar power plant expansion will be opposite Sempra Energy’s 480-megawatt El Dorado natural gas-fired power plant. El Dorado’s smooth functioning proved the ready integration of solar and natural gas generation. Copper Mountain will further demonstrate the feasibility of meeting peak power demand with supplemental solar energy-generated electricity.

Though Sempra will not begin construction until it obtains a PPA guaranteeing a market for Copper Mountain’s output, the 48-megawatt expansion is still expected to be complete by late 2010.

Nevada Solar One at Nellis Air Force Base is a 10-megawatt PV solar power plant. (click to enlarge)

This expansion demonstrates several advantages New Energy offers utilities. First, Renewable Electricity Standards (RESs) requiring the utilities in states all over the Southwest to obtain specific portions of their power from New Energy sources in the coming decade, Sempra anticipates no difficulty finding a customer for the plant’s output.

Second, this also demonstrates how much more quickly a solar power plant can be built and brought on line than a fossil fuel plant. A solar power plant may not require more than 18 months from the planning to the power generation. A natural gas plant could easily take 2-to-4 times that long. Coal and nuclear plants are even longer, prohibitively longer.

Finally, there is the consideration of supply. Sempra must deliver natural gas to the El Dorado facility and domestic natural gas supplies show signs of peaking. Nobody in the Southwest has even suggested the possibility of peaking supplies of sun.

Thin-film is a type of photovoltaic material - it turns sunlight into electricity. (click to enlarge)

The choice of First Solar to do the El Dorado expansion highlights the growing trend toward the use of thin-film materials for PV solar power plants instead of the silicon-based PV panels used in rooftop installations. First Solar’s enormous international success demonstrates thin-film is no longer merely a boutique-style "building-integrated" material. First Solar’s cadmium telluride thin-film is slightly less efficient than silicon-based solar panels but far less costly.

Cadmium Telluride is the thin-film formula behind First Solar's huge success. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Michael Allman, President/CEO, Sempra Generation: "We look forward to continuing our efforts to help western utilities meet their goals for renewable energy…This would be our largest renewable energy project thus far and move us closer to our stated goal of becoming the first U.S. company to own 500 MW of solar power."
- John Carrington, executive vice president of marketing and business development, First Solar: "We are pleased to have the opportunity to expand this 10MW project to 58MW—more than five times its original size, advancing our mission of providing clean, affordable solar electricity…Sempra Generation’s decision to use First Solar in expanding the El Dorado solar plant demonstrates our ability to provide a cost-effective energy solution for utility scale projects."