SUN POWER PLANT TO PV

Another giant solar plant ditches thermal tech for panels
Ucilia Wang, August 18, 2011 (GigaOm)

"Yet another massive solar thermal farm in the California desert is ditching the thermal part and opting for solar panels. Solar Trust of America, which has been developing a 1 GW solar farm in California…will use photovoltaic panels (PV) instead of solar thermal technology for the first 500 MW of the project.

"The change of technology means the company is foregoing the [$2.1 billion federal] loan guarantee and will look for private cash and loans for the project…PV technology offers some advantages that solar thermal doesn’t have in terms of project size and land use choices, which in turn affect a project’s development cost. Solar panel prices…have fallen by more than half in the past two years, making them a more attractive choice for developers…[P]rivate financing for PV projects is readily available."

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"Developers of several solar farms in California have already announced plans to switch from solar thermal to PV, including the Calico Solar Project and the Imperial Valley Solar Project. NRG, which has invested in a solar thermal power plant by BrightSource Energy, replaced two solar thermal power plant projects in favor of using solar panels.

"Solar Trust will ask the federal Bureau of Land Management to amend its permit…[and] keep doing some site preparation work for Blythe, but full-scale construction won’t start until the third quarter of next year…If it had chosen to use solar panels [from the start], then it wouldn’t have had to be under [a costly permitting] review by the energy commission, which oversees solar thermal power plants that are 50 MW or larger…[T]hat task belongs to the counties or cities in which the projects reside…"