The purchase, one of the largest ever of solar power, will help the
utility meet California's aggressive mandate: namely that utilities
have enough renewable sources online or under contract to supply
one-fifth of the electricity they sell by 2010. The new solar plant
is expected to begin producing energy in 2011 or 2012.
This contract, along with similar ones recently signed by Southern
California Edison, represents the resurrection of thermal solar
arrays, a technology first deployed in the 1980s that failed in the
1990s because of the collapse in the price of natural gas.
But with the price picture shifting and state mandates for renewable
energy spreading, an Israeli company, Solel Solar Systems of Beit
Shemesh, is betting that this technology will now pay off. The
approach may lack the appeal of the more familiar rooftop
photovoltaic cells, like the ones used in California's "Million Solar
Roofs" campaign, but it costs only around half as much for each unit
of energy produced.
P.G.& E. executives said that during peak summer hours, power from
the mirrors in the Mojave Solar Park Project would provide
electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes. Fong Wan, P.G.& E's
vice president for energy procurement, said in an interview on
Tuesday that "we view concentrated solar as one of the most promising
technologies for us."
While P.G.& E. executives and Solel's president, Avi Brenmiller,
would not specify how much the utility will pay, people close to both
companies put it at slightly more than 10 cents a kilowatt-hour -
roughly what an average kilowatt-hour sells for at retail to American
residential customers.
Electricity will be produced using a six-foot trough-shaped mirror
that focuses rays of the desert sun on a pipe less than three inches
in diameter, heating a fluid inside to 750 degrees Fahrenheit; the
fluid will release steam to drive a turbine. Small motors will tilt
the mirrors to keep them facing the sun.
The solar plant, planned to be built in the desert between the Nevada
state line and Barstow, Calif., would consist of four modules of 140
megawatts each, Mr. Brenmiller said. "It's going to be similar to
existing plants in style," he said, but added, "it will be a little
larger than the largest one ever built."
Israeli company Solel, which develops and implements solar thermal
technology, has signed a contract with Pacific Gas and Electric
Company to build the world's largest solar plant in California's
Mojave Desert..
The utilitiy will purchase 550 megawatts of solar power to be
generated by troughlike arrays of mirrors spread over nine square
miles in the Mojave Desert.