$3 Billion Solar Energy Project
By Nick April 15, 2008
BrightSource, a solar thermal company, has signed an agreement with California utility PG&E to supply 900 megawatts of energy, which is enough to supply over 500,000 households. This is the biggest solar project planned so far and will require five separate plants built in the Mojave Desert, with estimated costs between $2 and $3 billion.
The first 100MW facility will be ready by 2011, according to CEO John Woolard, and the remaining four 200MW plants will be running in the nest five years. Solar thermal uses fields of planted mirrors to focus all the captured sunlight in one point, usually to boil the water from a tank, which would drive turbines.
Designs vary, BrightSource using a central tower with a boiler chamber mounted on top. Currently, BrightSource and some of its rivals (Solel, Ausra) are offering some of the cheapest ways to produce electricity from solar power, cheaper even than technologies using solar cells.
The rates at which PG&E agreed to buy energy were not made public, but the utility company won at the negotiations against other utilities, so we can guess the prices are very close to the ones for energy from other existing sources. PG&E also has previous deals with Ausra and Solel, for 177 and respectively 553MW plants.
Topics: Energy |
Leave a Reply
« IBM Computer Center To Warm Up A Swiss Swimming Pool | Home | Shell And Associates Are Developing New Form Of BioGasoline »
