ROCKET SCIENCE SUN

It's rocket science: How SolarReserve is conquering new frontiers; SolarReserve has engineered a killer recipe that is proving all too tempting for utilities. But could an uneven playing field sour its secret ingredients?
Rikki Stancich, 15 January 2010 (CSP Today)

"The brainchild of rocket scientists and a private equity group specialized in renewable energies, SolarReserve, the solar energy development company, is primed to be a winner in the concentrated solar power sector.

"United Technology subsidiary, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, has combined its liquid rocket engine heat transfer technology and molten salt handling expertise to develop a unique tower receiver technology with thermal storage capabilities - for which SolarReserve is the exclusive license holder."

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"Another key ingredient is SolarReserve’s founding partner - the US Renewables Group, a US$575 million private equity firm…And finally…SolarReserve’s blend of professionals from the energy, technology and finance industries are proving to be a knockout combination…

"It is little wonder, then, that SolarReserve…[got] the crucial environmental permit…for its 50MW Alcázar Solar Thermal Power Project…[and] two separate PPAs: one with NV Energy for the 100 MW Crescent Dunes facility located near Tonopah, Nevada; and another with Pacific Gas & Electric for SolarReserve’s 150 MW Rice Solar Energy project in Riverside County, California."

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"But [expensive, water-conserving] dry cooling requirements on CSP developers like SolarReserve are placing an upward pressure on the cost of solar power generation – a factor that other power generators are as yet unaffected by…"

Kevin Smith, CEO, SolarReserve: “Why is it that the CSP sector in particular should be limited to dry cooling, when all the other energy projects out there – nuclear, coal, gas – could also be retrofitted to use dry cooling and save orders of magnitude of water over just targeting new CSP facilities? …[T]here is no reason why dry cooling should be mandated for CSP and not for other energy projects. There are hundreds of thousands of megawatts of coal and gas and other energy projects that use wet cooling, and yet nobody is looking at retrofitting existing facilities that currently use a tremendous amount of water…If utilities stipulated that all new projects use dry-cooling, then there would at least be a level playing field for CSP projects…”