Blythe solar project gets BLM approval in Riverside County

What’s the sunny equivalent of “when it rains, it pours”? Because that’s what’s happening in Southern California, as yet another massive solar plant cleared the permitting process Monday.

This time, it’s the Blythe Solar Power Plant, backed by German company Solar Millennium and planned for more than 7,000 acres in Riverside County. The project would be the largest solar installation in the world, doubling the amount of solar electricity the U.S. can produce.

The Blythe installation is the sixth in recent months to be approved for public land. Several proposed solar plants have been fast-tracked through the permitting process as they race to meet the December deadline for federal stimulus funds. One of those, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, is breaking ground Wednesday near Primm, Nev.

Winning final clearance to start construction from the Bureau of Land Management on Monday, after getting the go-ahead from California authorities last month, makes Blythe the first proposal of its kind to be approved for federal public land.

The installation will deliver 1 gigawatt of power using parabolic trough technology. The process involves curved mirrors that gather the sun’s rays, heating liquid that creates steam to run generators.

The multibillion-dollar Blythe project will consist of four separate, 250-megawatt sections that together would be able to power more than 300,000 average homes -– even up to 750,000 residences by some estimates.

The groundbreaking should happen by the end of the year, Solar Millennium said. But first, the company is in “advanced discussions” with the Department of Energy as it attempts to land $1.9 billion in government debt financing for the first two portions of the project, as several other solar projects have done.

Construction is expected to create more than 1,000 direct jobs, as well as thousands more throughout the supply chain, the company said. Once built, the plant will support nearly 300 permanent jobs.

The project, however, will have its share of impact on the environment. So, to mitigate any potential damage, regulators are requiring that Solar Millenium cough up funding to support more than 8,000 acres of habitat for native species such as the desert tortoise, the Western burrowing owl, the bighorn sheep and the Mojave fringe-toed lizard.

--Tiffany Hsu

Comments

[save the deserts!]

Sorry, Alan, but the plant will be at least $6 billion according to pretty much every source. Here is reuters:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1410741020100915

The "debt financing" she is referring to (taxpayer loans) can only provide a maximum of 64% of the project financing, with 30% coming (also from taxpayers) as a cash grant, free money. So, if 64% of the project is financed with 2 loans, each $1.9 billion, that means the cheapest it will be is $5 billion. If they are seeking somewhat less than 64% in government loans, that will make the cost higher.

$6 billion plus transmission (estimated at $50 million, paid by ratepayers) plus operating cost plus profit for less than 1,000 MW is WAY more than rooftop solar. look at actual installed prices, before rebates and tax credits at 1 Block off the Grid. They regularly come in below $6/watt. Net of rebates and credits, closer to $3/watt (with larger installations considerably cheaper).

And sorry, but PV and CSP are the EXACT same capacity factor, approximately 27%, which means that CSP does not produce any more power than PV on a per-MW-installed basis at the same location. Higher output is a myth, perpetuated by companies like Solar Millennium and Bright Source, which has now been disproven.

higher insolation in the desert is offset by transmission losses and production drops when it's hot outside, netting the SAME amount of power or less as point of use PV at the SCE homes and businesses it will serve.

it does not have "flexibility" as the entire output of the project is committed to SCE, which is exactly how rooftop solar would be.

We desperately need solar power, but not so much that we should kill off all our open spaces and insert Big Energy profiteers between us and our sunshine. WE can do this faster, cheaper and much cleaner if we just get feed in tariffs so WE can be paid fairly for producing the power on our own rooftops.

There is no excuse for killing the planet and calling it "saving the planet." Solar will not offset any coal because of intermittency, and it will be at least a decade before it can offset any "foreign oil" via electric cars. Let's do this RIGHT and use our built environment as our solar power station, and leave our wilderness alone!

[Gioacchino WFP]

Hunger and climate change often go hand-in-hand... here's how resolving the one problem can resolve the other problem http://www.wfp.org/aid-professionals/blog/how-food-assistance-can-contribute-environmental-protection

[X-Man]

These systems are much more efficient than single home versions and can be upgraded much more easily. It's also more flexible so it can send the energy where it's needed. They'll also be better maintained.

And that's anywhere from 300,000 to 750,000 so it's not $20,000 per home.

[Dairenn Lombard]

They took up seven THOUSAND acres of land to generate less than half of the power that the San Onofre power plant is capable of generating in just 84 acres? Solar panels are a good thing, but using up seven THOUSAND acres for them probably isn't.

[alan]

save the deserts!

Nice try but your math is just wrong... According to the article, its 500 megawats (two sections) for $1.9 billion which works out to $3.80/watt which more or less the same or lower than rooftop solar depending on who you buy it from and how much you pay for installation. It certainly IS NOT two to three times the cost of roof top solar.

[Park McGraw]

"1000 Megawatts for $6B"

That is a horrible deal per watt and makes a conventional PV system look cheap.

A fair deal using photo voltaic (PV) for a small scale commercial utility, less than 100MW is about $2.0 per watt installed. As the economy of scale improves, continues to fall. Using some clever approaches to system integration can lower that base cost even further approaching $1.00 per watt. Thus a PV equivalent would run about 2.0 billion or less.

Last year, I was leading a small team of engineers and physicist that was assisting with investigating the feasibility of proposing a 100MW-400MW PV system for the Navajo nation and am using figures from the engineering analysis of that proposed project.

Hence, this project, suffering from similar environmental vulnerabilities of a PV system cost about three times more than what should be considered acceptable.

[jack]

How about putting solar cells on every rooftop in America? Must be millions of acres...and enormous amounts of energy...going to waste just above our heads. And rooftops would be easy to connect to the power grid, since every building is already wired to it. Imagine all that electricity generated and gathered, without having to burn oil we've bought from terrorism supporting countries.

[Steven Diamond]

Finally someone is getting smart and beginning to use the abundant natural resources for the good of everyone. I can only hope that more states follow the lead and jump on this band wagon so that we can fix our dangerous grid problem. Go Solar Energy! Wind power too! Less Oil!
@StevenDiamond

[Greg Maragos]

Hopey-Changey, that's the way
To see another sunny day.
It's sad to see that some don't feel
Enthused for this, The Old New Deal.
Some people think it kind of sucks
Just living off of borrowed bucks.
But BHO knows more than that,
'Cause credit cards are where it's at.
Live for now; pay whenever
With anything anyhow whatsoever.
We all know that that's the plan
For funding project "Yes We Can."
It's kind of sad but kind of funny.
Ben Bernanke, print more money!
Unemployment, go away!
Uncle Barry wants to play.
Wars are raging--that's too bad.
Crappy news just makes us mad.
Private business, turn around,
Drop your pants, and hit the ground.
Teachers, unions, let's make love
As taxes rain from skies above.
Recession II has just begun.
Isn't Hopey-Changey fun???
Do not give in to dark despair.
Do not befoul your underwear.
Do not into this wound pour salt.
Do not forget it's Bush's fault.
Change takes time, and so does hope,
So just relax and smoke some dope.

[Austin]

This is great. A true step in the right direction toward green energy. But shouldn't we use the money to put solar panels on people's roofs instead? Or super-centers? Or other expanses of development, instead of building on undeveloped federal land like the pristine desert being ruined by the Ivanpah plant?

Concentration over control of energy too. Energy power plants instead of everyone having solar panels on their roofs.

[save the deserts!]

Genius. So aside from killing off all that taxpayer-owned wilderness, the taxpayer will get stuck with a $6 billion tab to power 300,000 homes? That's a cost of $20,000 per home. If you look at the current price of a rooftop solar installation for the same exact homes in the SCE territory, the same 3.5 kW PV system would cost a little under $10,000 and net the same amount of power.

It's official - we are now going to pay WAY MORE THAN TWICE AS MUCH AS ROOFTOP SOLAR for the SAME EXACT HOUSES!!!!! And that's just for the construction - these morons are also upgrading transmission (on ratepayer dime) and will EXPECT A PROFIT, after the substantial annual lease/production fees they will be paying.

What is wrong with this country? Why would we spend 2-3 times as much for the same power - A MUCH LESS GREEN VERSION - when WE could own the clean power production right where it is needed? We would rather kill our wilderness, create half as many jobs, waste billions of gallons of water, and monopolize our power supply than decentralize, clean, and democratize the grid while reducing GHG emissions far more?

[melkor]

Only 0.21 Gigawatts to go until we can plug in the flux capacitor!

[Calvin]

Okay now, a big boost for California.
err, one question though, who is going to clean all those mirrors?