Too late for Big Solar to save the day?

California utility PG&E on Tuesday announced contracts to buy up to 900 megawatts of electricity generated by solar power plants to be built in the Mojave Desert by BrightSource Energy. It’s one of the biggest solar deals to date -- enough to power some 600,000 homes -- and is another sign that that the shift from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy is well underway, at least in California.

But is it too late? PG&E (PCG) first announced it was negotiating a power purchase agreement with BrightSource, then called Luz II, on Aug. 10, 2006. Around that time, the United States’ leading climate scientist, NASA’s James Hansen, warned that the world had only a decade to take drastic action to cut carbon emissions and avert a global catastrophe from global warming.

It took nearly two years alone to just hammer out the PG&E-BrightSource deal and the world now has eight years left to radically ramp up alternative energy sources. By the time the first BrightSource 100-megawatt solar power plant (image above) goes online it will be 2011 and the last one will begin generating electricity for PG&E just as the climate change alarm clock goes off. If you believe Hansen, hitting the snooze button will not be an option.

Of course, there’s no guarantee the BrightSource plants will actually be built — it will take billions to construct them and the investment climate is not exactly sunny these days, clouded by Wall Street’s meltdown and the looming expiration of a crucial solar investment tax credit. (Personally, Green Wombat is betting BrightSource pulls it off — though April Fool’s Day probably was not the best date to unveil such a deal. The Oakland, Calif.-based company was founded by solar pioneer Arnold Goldman, its CEO, John Woolard, hails from Silicon Valley and the startup is backed by Morgan Stanley (MS) and some savvy venture capitalists.)

Given the moral and regulatory imperative — California utilities must obtain 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010 and a third by 2020 — why is large-scale solar proceeding at the pace of a Mojave Desert tortoise? (Almost three years ago, for instance, Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE) unveiled agreements with Phoenix’s Stiring Energy Systems to buy up to 1,750 megawatts of solar electricity. Ground has yet to be broken on any of the planned power plants.)

Partly it’s because the years-long negotiations between utilities and solar power plant companies is something of a black box. Details of these power purchase agreements are kept confidential but are estimated to be worth billions — if a recent $4 billion dealstruck by utility Arizona Public Service with solar power plant builder Abengoa Solar is any indication. Regulated utilities are by their nature big and bureaucratic and can be expected to be extra-cautious when they’re placing bets on untried solar technology from companies like BrightSource and Ausra.

“Transactions of this magnitude require a fair amount of time to negotiate and due diligence must also be performed,” PG&E spokeswoman Jennifer Zerwer told Green Wombat in an e-mail. “The original [BrightSource agreement] announced in August 2006 was for 500 megawatts; the final agreement expanded on the original . . . and culminated in the execution of five separate power purchase agreements for up to 900 MW.”

Another factor is a regulatory structure that is an artifact of the fossil fuel age. California requires extensive environmental review of new power plant projects — be they clean and green or down and dirty — a process that can take a 18 months or more. And the best solar sites often are on federal land in the Mojave — securing a lease for that land is another 18-month-long process.

Still, when the United States faced a threat of a different kind in World War II, it retooled its factories in a matter of months to produce planes and tanks. The fight against global warming will require a similar agility.

The clock, after all, is ticking.

Comments

[steve]

Well given the short time we supposedly have left I would have to say the answer would be a resounding yes. I doubt it will even have a big affect on the Southwest by that time. I have serious doubts that anyone really knows when it will be too late anyway. I am also a frequent traveler to Asia and can not believe the growth going on and have doubts that our cuts in CO2 will matter much anyway. That being said I feel we should do all we can do to curb emissions and more importantly to me provide clean, safe domestic energy sources.

It is good to see Brightsource has a contract. Now I just hope they can get funding for the project. If Brightsource still has the same engineers as the original SEGS project they have some extremely talented people. Lets just hope they hire some talented people to run the business side of things so they won’t repeat the mistakes of the past. I know many people who worked on the original projects and the general consensus is as designers they were great but the projects were poorly run on the business side.

I feel that the solar towers may very well be the way of the future. Being a dual axis design they should have the ability to track the sun much better than the current trough systems, especially during the winter months. I also feel there will be less heat loss if they store the heating medium (water, oil or salt) in one area and not have to send it all over the field.

[Marty Flick]

With this mega-jump to solar power - which I applaud - I'm wondering what the reflected heat of all those cells might do to the environment? DIRECT global warming? I mean, asphalt itself came into diss-use because of the heat it generates ...

Also, just for grins, I'd like to see more collaborative efforts - use the whole spectrum of solutions in a 'web' of green. I watched a program on green building - and it doesn't just apply to new housing. How about making that more viable in this economy?

Let's quit dissing each other, and sit down to business ... Thassall for now!

[steve]

Well the reflected heat is not reflected back into the environment but to a very small space to heat oil. Would be a lot better than generating heat by burning something. Anyway really it is so small as to be laughable to think it would have any effect whatsoever. And not trying to be too funny here but when did asphalt come into disuse?

[Jim]

Marty, you forgot something.

We make electricity by boiling water and converting around 35% of the heat in the water into electric power. (On average, that's the best we can do).

When we use solar heat to boil the water, there's no net heating of earth from doing this.

When we burn fossil fuels to do this, the carbon dioxide that results, during its life in the atmosphere, captures 100,000 times more heat than was released when the fuel was burned. So in terms of impact on the planet: running your hair dryer on solar powered electricity has no effect; running your hair dryer on coal powered electricity adds as much heat to Planet Earth as three Boeing 747s running at full takeoff power for the time it's "on".

Friends don't let friends buy dirty electric power.

[Smashworth]

First, off, are we actually supposed to believe that, while China and India massively pollute, two gigawatts of California solar is going to save the Earth? In the next few years? Pathetically ridiculous.

These solar plants are probably a great thing (though I haven't read the kWh charge to the consumer yet) but they have no impact whatsoever on global warming. None.

Second, all that light which used to be shining on the Mohave Desert is now being used to boil oil. Are we supposed to believe that has no environmental impact? You write as if an Environmental Impact Statement for a solar plant is a relic. It's not. If it was a good idea for a coal plant, it's certainly a good idea for the perpetual night these solar plants create for everything in their huge shadows.

Unlike coal plants, no vegetation can grow in the perpetual shadow of a solar plant. The sun gives 100W/sq m of energy. We convert at maybe 30% efficiency. To get 900 MW, we need to put 30,000,000 sq m in perpetual night. That's 11.5 SQUARE MILES. Don't you think we consider what happens (EIS) when we put that much bare ground under permanent blackness?

Global warming is crap, but I'm all for less pollution. IF it makes economic and practical sense. Solar power installations are great but the hypocritical hand-waving of clueless hippies is repulsive. You have impossible standards for coal, but "anything goes" with solar, even if you kill some endangered plants and animals without even bothering to check first.

[steve]

Smashworth I don’t think you have a very good understanding of how solar plants work or how the power industry in general works. First off the oil is not “boiled”, it is heated and reused. It does pose a local problem if it is spilled but that is not often and is cleaned up very well. There are many environmental rules and regulations that must be followed. There are also some new plans that call for the oil to not be used at all.

Ok you made the statement that solar plants put the land under perpetual darkness. This is not the case but the vegetation is removed. The last couple of plants that were built in the Mojave and a new one that is proposed are built on alfalfa farmland. Alfalfa is a very water intensive plant and in my opinion is not ideally suited for growing in a desert. There are extensive environmental reports completed before any plant is built.

You also stated that solar plants use more land than coal plants. That may be true for the actual plant but coal plants need mining, transportation of coal to the plant and transportation and disposal of the fly ash off the plant. We have to make sacrifices but there is a huge amount of land in the Mojave and in reality we would use a very small amount of it for solar. A much bigger issue would be water use.

Ok with current technology you would need about 6 square miles of mirrors to build 900 MW’s worth of solar-thermal. Some of the new technologies claim to do even better. The mirrors are above ground so the land is not dark. There is extensive training about environmental issues. If you feel that they are just going to throw one of these things up with checking if they are killing “some endangered plant and animals, without even bothering to check first”, you are mistaken.

[Smashworth]

What is this sentence of yours supposed to mean?

"Another factor is a regulatory structure that is an artifact of the fossil fuel age. California requires extensive environmental review of new power plant projects — be they clean and green or down and dirty"

It clearly means that it's wrong for such an intensive EIS to be made for a solar plant. Yet your most recent post assures me that it's not wrong.

Make up your mind.

Second, you can't make the sun brighter, no matter how much you wave your hands. The sun provides 100 W/sq m, there is nothing anyone can do to increase that.There is absolutely no way this plant can produce 900 MW covering only 6 sq miles. That would imply an efficiency of above 50%, and it simply can't happen.

We can safely assume that the plant-builders are not going to build on land which they don't own, leaving one option - they're not going to produce 900 MW. You can't make energy, even Magical Green Solar Energy out of nothing. The laws of physics still apply.

Then you go on to tell me that the ground under the mirrors won't be dark. IT damn well better be dark. Whatever light is permitted to hit the ground is NOT MAKING ELECTICITY. That's a LACK OF EFFICIENCY. Maybe you plan to cover 300 sq mi with slightly opaque mirros and hope the hay grows?

Again, you're just waving your hands. You must capture 1 sq m of sunlight to create 3o - 40 W of electricy. The 40 number is total crap but that's a different point. The real point is that no matter how you spread out the mirrors, they're totally opaque and the do their work by BLOCKING SUNLIGHT.

I don't care if you boil KY jelly or oil or water or whatever, I never objected to anything about that. Boil whatever works best - but don't create straw men to imply false ignorance. Read my post, my two points are concise and clear. You didn't even repond to the first one AT ALL. Either global warming is real and we're all fucked, because China/India are not even pretending to care, OR gloabl warming is crap and we'll be fine. No Cali solar plant is going to change that.

Converting hayfields to power plants is a trade-off. To be clear, 6 sq miles is over 3700 acres of farmland which will go missing. I'm not saying that's a bad trade, but it's definitely a trade.

The base problem here is that the level of scrutiny given to oil, coal and uranimum plants is totally abandoned for "green" tech like solar and wind and ethanol.

As for calling me uniformed and ignorant, I admit I didn't know they were putting hayfields in blackness instead of untouched desert. It seems very counter-productive to me.

For everything else I claimed and nearly all of what you claimed, you are the ignorant one. When physics gets in the way, you magically wave your hands. When you need sunlight for your plant, you get it without casting a shadow, at double the intensity the rest of us recieve.

Whatever.

[steve]

Smash you need to get off the caffeine my friend. Ok I really have no idea of what you are talking about in the first quote you attribute to me. I did not write it or really believe in it. In the end all projects need and are going to have environmental reports.

Ok this next one is going to hurt a little. The solar radiation is over 1000 Watts, per square meter, on sunny (most) summer days in the Mojave. If it were only 100 watts we would certainly not have to worry about global warming as we would pretty much just be a big ice ball. So most of your little statement just kind of flies out the window there. The mirrors do not cover the whole surface of the ground because they follow the sun. If they covered every square inch then they would block the sun from other mirrors except when the sun was directly overhead. It would also be impossible to do maintenance and cleaning on them as there would be no really good way to get to them. Plants would grow quite will in the shadow of a solar plant but are not allowed to for safety reasons.

OK as to my view on global warming I assume it is real. I am not a scientist and most seem to agree it is real so I will go with that. I am going to go out on a limb here and assume you are not a scientist either so I guess we are in the same boat. I spend quite a lot of time in Asia and agree that unless China and India get on board then this is not going to matter a lot. One or two solar plants won’t make a big deal but hundreds may and at the very least help us be less imported energy dependent.

You are wrong about companies needing to own the land or even it being a major problem. There are many land deals I am aware of right now where the land has been tied up specifically for solar plants. While it is difficult the BLM will also long term lease land for the same purpose.

Now you are correct that there are environmental risks with all types of power but I consider solar-thermal to be relatively small compared to coal. California does not even allow new coal plants to be built or new long term coal contracts to be signed.

Oh and one last thing I never called you ignorant. I did say you were not well informed about power plants.

[Adrian]

Ugh, nothing grows in the Mojave anyway...Its barren hardpack. Ever driven to Vegas? You might as well be driving on Mars!