In what’s said to be the biggest solar energy venture to date, Southern California Edison and BrightSource Energy have inked a deal for a series of solar thermal projects totalling 1,300 megawatts.
The agreement consists of seven projects, with the first of the solar power plants being a 100 megawatt facility located in Ivanpah, California. The plant could be operating in early 2013 and is expected to produce 286,000 megawatt-hours of renewable electricity per year.
The full 1,300 megawatts will generate 3.7 billion kilowatt-hours of clean energy a year; enough to power 845,000 California homes. The capacity represents reduction of over two million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually – the equivalent of removing more than 335,000 cars from the road.
Unlike solar panel based solar energy farms, the facilities will use “power tower” solar thermal technology, where thousands of small mirrors called heliostats reflect sunlight onto a boiler situated on top of a tower to produce steam. The steam is then used to turn a conventional turbine which generates electricity.
The Brightsource LPT 550 system uses air-cooling to convert the steam back into water, which is then returned to the boiler in an environmentally-friendly closed cycle. According to Brightsource, the fully integrated energy system is designed to offer the highest operating efficiencies and lowest capital costs.
Southern California Edison is no stranger to renewable energy and already has an impressive portfolio that includes 1,137 megawatts of wind power, 906 megawatts from geothermal, 356 megawatts of solar energy, 185 megawatts from biomass and 332 megawatts from small hydro.
