The United States’ Department of Energy (DOE) will look to double the installed capacity of America’s concentrated solar power (CSP) by offering a $2 billion conditional loan to support two state-of-the-art CSP facilities – the Mojave Solar Project, and the Genesis Solar Project, both located in California.
The DOE will offer $1.2 billion in support of the Mojave Solar Project, which its sponsor, Abengoa Solar Inc, says will provide the region with 900 new jobs. The Genesis CSP plant will receive a conditional commitment of $681.6 million.
The DOE’s Loan Guarantee Program provides conditional funding for 80 percent of the total costs of renewable energy projects in the USA.
The 250 megawatt (MW) Mojave plant will generate electricity for 53,000 homes and avoid 350,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. Mojave will be the first utility-scale deployment of Abengoa’s new Solar Collector Assembly (SCA) which improves upon earlier parabolic trough technology common to CSP plants in the 1980s and 90s. The SCA frame is lightweight and cheaper to build and install, using mirrors with improved reflectivity and accuracy. An advanced thermal collection point increases overall energy efficiency of the plant by 30 percent.
Although based on an earlier design using scalable parabolic trough solar thermal technology, the 250MW Genesis Solar Project will still provide almost 900 jobs and produce enough power for 48,000 homes, as well as avoiding 320,000 tons of carbon emissions per year.
“These projects represent an important step in the development of solar as an affordable, clean energy resource in this country,” said US Energy Secretary, Steven Chu. “By investing in the commercial-scale deployment of solar technologies, we can create greater efficiencies that will lower the cost of solar power while creating jobs and increasing our global competitiveness in this key industry.”
