The Department of Interior today announced final approval of two large solar energy projects in southern California that will produce 754 megawatts of clean renewable energy to power more than a quarter million homes and create almost 300 permanent jobs and about 700 construction jobs.
The Bureau of Land Management has been expediting approval of large solar projects on BLM land in order to meet the deadline to secure funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the stimulus). Since July, the BLM and CA Energy Commission have given final or preliminary approval to nine large solar projects that together will bring more than 4,000 megawatts of clean, renewable power on-line in coming years, enough to power about 1.2 million homes, including a 1 gigawatt concentrated solar thermal project in southern CA.
Some of these projects are solar photovoltaic, but most are concentrated solar thermal.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/06/concentrated-solar-surge-begins-in-southwest/
Certain individuals are constantly claiming that renewable energy is too expensive, the technology isn’t sufficiently developed, etc. etc. Yet California is implementing these technologies to move towards meeting the state’s 33% renewable energy standard by 2020. What are your thoughts on this news?
Concentrated solar thermal costs approximately 15 cents per kWh which is cheaper than new nuclear power. As for carbon sequestration – don’t make me laugh. David’s reference is to a study of what this virtually non-existent technology could hypothetically cost.
more info on solar thermal: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/14/solar_electric_thermal/print.html
David’s example proves my point, by the way.
"[Arizona Public Service Co.] will pay about 14 cents per kilowatt-hour [for energy from Solana solar thermal], compared with about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour from natural-gas plants at peak demand."
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0221biz-solar0221.html
And solar thermal prices will drop as the technology becomes more widely implemented, as opposed to long-established fossil fuels and nuclear which are becoming no cheaper.
David – yes I know you’re ignoring all costs other than initial construction. I’m glad you admit that. Concentrated solar thermal plants have storage capacity, by the way. Thus they can also operate at night.
