SOLAR POWER PLANT PROGRESS

BrightSource Energy: Ivanpah project powers ahead
Rikki Stancich, 27 May 2010 (CSP Today)

"BrightSource Energy, Inc., developer of utility-scale solar thermal power plants, recently raised an additional US$150 million in equity financing, bringing…[its total] to more than US$300 million…[It] will be used to support BrightSource's 2,610 megawatts in contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and Southern California Edison to build 14 solar power plants in the US southwest by 2016…

"...[Brightsource Energy’s] current project, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Facility, consists of three separate solar thermal plants, which will employ BrightSource Energy’s Luz Power Tower 550 technology (LPT 550)…being [successfully] demonstrated at the Solar Energy Development Center (SEDC) in Israel’s Negev Desert…"

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"The Ivanpah project was recently granted US$1.37 billion in [DOE] loan guarantees…[and was] given “fast-track” priority by the U.S. Department of Interior for obtaining federal stimulus benefits…[A recent permitting process necessitated] reduction of the projects footprint by 12 percent, reducing the number of heliostats by 40,000 and reducing the total gross capacity of the Ivanpah project from 440 megawatts to 392 megawatts…The Ivanpah project is scheduled to begin construction in the second half of 2010…"

[Keely Wachs, senior director of corporate communications, Brightsource Energy:]
"…We're going to need tens of thousands of gigawatts to meet global demand for carbon-free energy…Like wind energy, power produced from CSP must be done at scale…Our ability to produce at scale enables us to compete directly with today's new natural gas peaker plants…"

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[Keely Wachs, senior director of corporate communications, Brightsource Energy:]"We will use dry-cooling technology at our Ivanpah plant to conserve valuable water resources in the arid climate…[It reduces]water usage by more than 90%… 25 times less water than a wet-cooled parabolic trough plant…One of the advantages of the power tower design…[is] that we're more efficient…[which] allows us to dry-cool with a significantly less efficiency loss and more cost effectively…"

[Keely Wachs, senior director of corporate communications, Brightsource Energy:] "Ivanpah will deliver three of the fourteen plants under contract with PG&E and SCE. We currently have more than 14 gigawatts of sites under control and are actively developing 4.2 gigawatts worth of sites…distributed between BLM, state and private lands throughout the US southwest."