Surprises for a Renewable Energy Developer

“If you cut us,” said Jim Barry, CEO of Dublin-based renewables developer NTR, “we bleed development.” One aspect of development is foremost in Barry’s thinking today. “When you overlay the risk profile of launching new technology in 2010 as against the state of financial markets and the general macroeconomic context,” he said, “you have challenges.”

NTR has more than 30 years of experience with development challenges. Founded as an Irish toll road developer in 1978 (NTR stands for National Toll Roads), it has worked on everything from bridges to car parks. Some projects succeeded and some did not but development is “deep in the DNA of this company,” Barry said.

The first surprise came with the building of NTR’s first, twelve-megawatt wind farm in northwest Ireland. “We had to go out and create a fully integrated, $75 million supply business in order to be able to give ourselves a contract in the wind farm for the electricity.”

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Cuillagh in Dunegal was the first merchant wind farm in the world. From the experience, NTR learned the wind business from towers in the ground to electricity markets. It made them, Barry said, “a much better electricity developer.”

Looking to reinvest, NTR founded Wind Capital Group and went back to “classic” (onshore, moderate-size) wind development in the U.S. Midwest. Surprisingly, Barry said Wind Capital is now making plans to build wind projects in the Southeast, where conservative opponents of wind in the U.S. Senate claim the resource is inadequate.

Seeking out further utility-scale renewable opportunities, NTR began looking into solar power plant technology. It discovered Stirling Energy Systems (SES), a builder of the innovative and otherworldly-looking dish solar power plant technology. “My mantra for years was, ‘We don’t do technology. We’re project developers.’ But we took a view that if we wanted to play at the utility scale in solar, we would need to take a proprietary interest in technology,” Barry said. “Otherwise we’d be waiting a long time.”

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Three things about the SES concept attracted NTR. “The economics, number one. Second, no water. Third was the modularity of the technology.”

What was difficult about solar power plant development, NTR came to understand, was the inordinate delays associated with permitting and transmission access. That’s why NTR chose SES. “What we loved about the projects, was that they were at the top of the que on grid and on the California Energy Commission’s and BLM’s hierarchy.”

The decision has paid off with very recent final approvals for the 709-megawatt Tessera project in California’s Imperial Valley. But the surprises have not stopped. For NTR, development may not be possible because the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been very slow in rolling out loan guarantees necessary to make Tessera economically viable.

Barry described himself as “pretty cynical” and added “there’s no point getting frustrated. It is what it is. It will take dramatic events to shape or reshape policy.”

The full version of this story will be up soon at Greentech Media

Today’s schedule:

Late morning: AMCS – Advanced Manufacturing Control Systems Ltd. These folks are at the cutting edge of waste management.

Mid-afternoon: National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Important work in smart technology is being done here.