Can SolarReserve Top BrightSource?

July 21, 2010

SolarReserve is one of the few next-generation solar-thermal vendors with field experience.

The company has the exclusive rights to the molten-salt technology United Technologies’ Pratt &Whitney RocketDyne tested at Solar Two in the California desert during the 1990s.

“We consider that to be a strong competitive advantage,” says Tom Georgis, vice president of development.

It also is a critical reason why the Santa Monica company believes its plants will match or top the efficiency of BrightSource’s Ivanpah. And the experience is at the foundation of SolarReserve’s belief it will find financing, despite the reluctance of private lenders.

SolarReserve is among the most promising of a new wave of solar-thermal developers. Instead of replying on parabolic mirrors, like the SEGS operating in the Southwest desert, these entrepreneurs hope to prove technologies just now moving from the drawing board to large scale deployment: ground-mounted heliostats, heat-concentrating towers, high operating temperatures and storage mechanisms, such as molten salt.

The company’s proposed plants (two in the United States and one in Spain) use as many as 17,000 heliostats to reflect sunlight to receivers atop of 653-foot towers. There the sunlight transfers heat to molten salt, warming the sodium and potassium mixture to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit, after which it is transferred to a storage tank where it loses no more than 1 degree a day. (BrightSource also anticipates more than 1,000-degree temperatures at Ivanpah.) The superheated liquid is channeled to a heat exchanger where it boils water and powers a turbine.

Solar Reserves claims high efficiencies for much of its operations. The transfer of sunlight to heated salt is 88 percent efficient and the storage tank maintains 98 to 99 percent of the thermal efficient of the molten salt. The weak link is the steam generation system: about 39 to 42 percent efficient. Improvements in turbine technology should raise this.

Altogether, a SolarReserve plant will have an efficiency of 18 to 19 percent, says Georgis. This compares favorably to the 18 percent efficiency BrightSource expects at Ivanpah. (The new generation of solar-thermal plant with concentrating towers and heliostats in general should achieve efficiencies of 17 percent to 20 percent, says Electric Power Research Institute Project Manager Cara Libby – well above the 13 to 15 percent of the older trough plants in the Southwest and Spain.)

SolarReserve also expects to rival BrightSource with its capacity factor, a measure of the amount of time a plant can achieve full output.

The California plant, outfitted with a 150-megawatt turbine, is designed to generate peak-period power for PG&E. Running an average of 8.5 hours a day, it should achieve a capacity factor of 34 percent by heating and storing salt in the mornings and using it to deliver power well into the evening.

BrightSource’s 392 megawatt Ivanpah is to have a capacity factor of 30 percent.

SolarReserve’s Nevada plant should do better. It will have a smaller 100-megawatt turbine and operate longer hours, earning a capacity factor of 53 percent. (The longer the operating hours and the smaller the turbine, the higher the capacity factor is likely to go.)

Despite the ability of the SolarReserve facilities to storage energy, the challenge will be finding financing. Without federal loan guarantees, most plants won’t stand a chance. But the company doesn’t appear ready to buy into the theory.

“It is certainly a challenging environment,” agrees Georgis. “But we are confident we will secure financing for our projects.”

SolarReserve has applied for Department of Energy loan guarantees and is quick to defend their role. “Having the DOE loan guarantees makes it easier to finance,” he says. The extensive government due diligence makes private lenders more comfortable and debt cheaper.

That’s why the industry let out a sigh of relief when Abengoa’s Solana plant near Phoenix won $1.45 billion of Energy Department loan guarantees in July – the first granted since BrightSource’s $1.37 billion package in February.

But SolarReserve appears willing to push ahead even without a government award. It hopes to break ground in both California and Nevada by the end of the year.

The company argues that utilities wouldn’t sign power purchase agreements if they didn’t value the power – a key proof-point with banks. It also largely dismisses increasing competition from solar panels.

Panels are easier to finance, quicker to permit and simpler to deploy. They also are less expensive. With the collapse of module pricing last year, panel costs fell to between $3.50 and $5.50 a watt from $6 or more, says Ted Sullivan, senior analyst at Lux Research. Costs of solar thermal remain largely unchanged at $7 to $8 a watt.

Still SolarReserve isn’t deterred. “It’s more competitive now, no question,” concedes Georgis. But “our power plants are not intermittent resources (and) we’re offering competitive pricing.”

So will the new generation of plants be successful? “It’s too early to say,” says Sullivan. “There have been a lot of plans out there, but nothing has been built on that scale.”

With many technologies showing promise, it will be interesting to see who goes first.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

How Big Is The Clean Tech Market?

July 2, 2010

What is the annual market opportunity for renewable energy and efficiency measures, such as building controls, energy reconstruction and electric vehicles? Does $1 trillion sound like an enticing number?

One trillion dollars may sound gargantuan, but it is what the International Energy Agency suggested in a recommendation earlier this week. And it isn’t far from the scale of the global warming efforts called for in other top studies.

In its landmark 2007 report, for instance, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that mitigating atmospheric heat rise would cost the world 0.2 percent to 3 percent of annual GDP. Mitigation isn’t the same as market opportunity.

To obtain an economy where 50 percent of electricity come from renewable sources, the world will need to build the generation listed above

But it defines the magnitude of the effort – and perhaps the willingness of business to respond with innovation.

To put the IPCC’s projection in annual dollars, consider that the world’s gross domestic product is $61 billion. Three percent of that comes to $1.8 trillion a year. The IPCC’s report says the effort would hold temperature increases to between 2 degrees and 4 degrees Celsius.

The Paris-based IEA looks at impact from a different angle. The agency projects that the world will need to spend $46 trillion between now and 2050 to be sure half of all electricity comes from renewable sources. This includes improving energy efficiency.

Divide the number out and it comes to about $1.2 trillion a year. Most of this spending is to come from consumers buying more efficient, low-carbon equipment and, particularly, cars. Of course some of the money will be paid back through lower fuel use.

But achieving an economy where 50 percent of electricity comes from renewable generation requires an industrial investment as well beyond what might be anticipated to meet growing energy demand. That approach includes the annual construction or deployment of:

*More than 30 nuclear reactors;
*Thirty-five coal-fired plants with carbon capture technology;
*Two hundred biomass plants;
*Nearly 16,000 wind turbines;
*Forty-five geothermal plants;
*Three hundred and twenty-five million solar panels; and
*Fifty-five solar thermal plants.

Energy-efficiency improvements in developed countries also must continue at today’s almost 2 percent a year pace, a pace that is almost double from the 1990s.

The IAE points out that in 2008, the world invested about $110 billion in wind, solar and other renewable generation. Investment levels remained relatively stable in 2009, despite the downturn.

Still, they are one-tenth of where they need to be. It sounds like a monster of an opportunity.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Siemens Wants To Be Number One In Solar Thermal

June 30, 2010

Siemens continues to talk tough about solar thermal.

The German conglomerate with 18 billion Euros in sales so far this year says its goal is to be the world’s leading solar-thermal company, toping companies such as BrightSource, eSolar and SolarReserve.

It didn’t say by when. But it claims its decision in May to buy 45 percent of Archimede Solar Energy and its purchase of Solel last year give it a broader portfolio of products than competitors.

With recent acquistions, Siemens claims its has 70 percent of the components and systems the new generation of solar thermal plants need.

Archimede is a joint venture between Siemens and Angelantoni Industries and makes solar receivers for concentrating solar. Output is to 75,000 receivers by 2011. Siemens had 28 percent of the venture before increasing it to 45 percent.

The German giant bought Solel Solar of Israel in October, paying $418 million. Solel develops plants and manufactures equipment.

On a conference call this week, Rene Umlauft, head of the Siemens’ renewable energy division, said the acquisitions give Siemens 70 percent of the components and systems necessary for solar thermal plants.

“We have the power blocks,” says Umlauft.

The company is now promising lower costs – as a new generation of more efficient plants begins to take root in the American Southwest, northern Africa and Australia. The plants use mirrors to reflect sunlight and boil liquids, often in concentrators or receivers on the tops of tall towers. The super hot liquids turn turbines to create electricity.

The plants are expensive to build, which might give Siemens, with its financial resources, an advantage. In the United States, 2010 is a year to watch. Several large facilities from companies such as BrightSource and SolarReserve hope to win approval and construction is anticipated to begin.

Also among Siemens’ goals:

*Become the number three vendor in wind turbines by 2012;

Deliver a 6 MW wind turbine by 2012. A prototye of the massive product is to be installed for testing next year.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Is Ivanpah The World’s Most Efficient Solar Plant?

June 21, 2010

BrightSource Energy’s planned Ivanpah plant will be one of the world’s largest solar farms and possibly its most efficient.

When the solar-thermal plant is built on the edge of the Mojave National Preserve (construction is expected to start this year), it will operate at 18 percent efficiency and earn a capacity factor of 30 percent.

BrightSource boasts of 18 percent plant efficiency and a 30 percent capacity factor.

This performance should make the 392-MW facility more efficient than plants with crystalline-silicon panels, thin-film cells or rival thermal technologies using parabolic mirrors, according to analysts.

The plant is to be laid out on three nearby tracts covering 3,500 acres of desert and should run at full capacity 10 to 11 hours a day. The company says a back-up natural gas system will aid performance during its long hours of operation, easing power fluctuations on cloudy days. This consistency of power should put electricity costs on par with natural-gas plants, something photovoltaic plants will take another two years to achieve, some analysts say.

While comparing plants is complex and imperfect, the newly available figures from BrightSource make the exercise a useful chore. Sun intensity, atmospheric moisture levels and power transmission costs of course differ plant location to plant location.

But determining who holds the industry’s bragging rights – as well as who deserves project investment dollars – is a task utilities attempt everyday, despite the difficulties.

In an interview, BrightSource Product Manager Andy Taylor described Ivanpah’s efficiency as a sunlight-to-electricity calculation based on two years of testing the company’s Luz Power Tower 550 in Israel’s Negev Desert. At the top of the towers, boilers absorb sunlight reflected from 7-square-meter ground-mounted mirrors and heat water to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest temperature in the industry. The super-heated steam drives turbines.

The company says a back-up natural gas system permits the long operating hours and the ability to run most of the day at full capacity. The gas is used to warm boilers in the morning and augment solar power on cloudy days to keep output high.

“We’re pretty much a sun-up-to-sun-down resource,” Taylor says.

BrightSource, which has so far raised more than $300 million in financing, expects the plant’s efficiency to rise as the company moves beyond its first-generation technology. Higher-efficiency turbines are already in the market, and additional mirrors, or heliostats, can be deployed. Water temperatures also will rise to above 1,100 degrees.

In contrast to Ivanpah’s 18 percent efficiency, the efficiency of utility-scale crystalline silicon and thin-film plants is likely less than 12 percent. Solar-thermal plants with parabolic mirrors also have difficulties keeping up. Ivanpah’s higher boiler temperatures give it an advantage, and dual-axis tracking can more accurately follow the sun through the seasons. The average efficiency of other solar thermal plants is 13 to 15 percent, says Cara Libby, project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute.

That doesn’t mean Ivanpah won’t have competition, One crystalline-silicon vendor, SunPower, with industry leading 18 percent efficient solar cells, could give BrightSource a run for its money, says Travis Bradford, president of the public-policy think tank, Prometheus Institute. A SunPower farm with a single axis tracking could have an efficiency of 15 percent, maybe slightly higher depending on the location, he says.

Broader competition will come with falling solar-panels prices, unless a stronger Chinese currency slows the trend. Panel prices tumbled about 40 percent last year and, while they are more stable this year, they continue to decline more rapidly than solar thermal efficiency is improving.

BrightSource responds that plant efficiency is only one measure of performance, and not necessarily the best. Capacity factor, a calculation of a farm’s ability to deliver full power over time, may be more important, the company says.

Ivanpah’s capacity factor (including the use of natural gas) should be 30 percent, Taylor claims. A wind farm in an ideal location (think Tehachapi) can have a factor of 40 percent. Photovoltaic plants generally are lower. A Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center study estimates a PV plant in Arizona should be closer to 20 percent.

Another useful metric is the delivered cost of electricity. BrightSource claims this measure makes Ivanpah “extremely competitive,” but declines to release figures to back up the claim. The calculation looks at plant output versus costs and factors in development and financing charges.

An examination of California Public Utilities Commission documents shows only that expected delivered costs are to be less than 12.5 cents a kWh. It doesn’t state how much less.

Nevertheless, Nathaniel Bullard, a solar analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, calculates that the cost of Ivanpah’s electricity will be lower than photovoltaic power and about the same as natural gas. Of course no one knows for sure until the plant is built. “We’ll see if they can meet the targets they have in place,” Bullard says.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Alcoa Hopes To Lower Solar Thermal Costs With Aluminum Mirrors

March 26, 2010

It is no surprise aluminum maker Alcoa hopes to lower the cost of solar power by using aluminum mirrors to concentrate solar rays.

The only surprise is that it has taken the company this long.

Alcoa's test mirror measures 20 feet by 46 feet and promises greater durability than glass.

The metals giant said it is conducting early tests of a parabolic mirror with the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado. The department has put $2.1 million into the project.

A positive result would suggest more durable aluminum mirrors could replace the glass reflectors typically used in solar thermal plants today. The plants use the concentrated energy to heat water (or another liquid) and power a steam turbine, generating electricity. The aluminum mirror measures 46 feet by 20 feet.

Results of the test are expected in the second quarter and large-scale trials will follow.

The company argues the benefits go beyond lower costs, which it can achieve through high-volume manufacturing. Thermal energy can be stored (think hot water) and used when the sun hides behind a cloud or sets for the day. This should permit greater grid stability.

NREL said it welcomed a major U.S. manufacturer entering the market.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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