 | 12/17/2013 | California rejects another Brightsource CSP project |
The California Energy Commission has blocked the construction of Brightsource’s 500MW Palen project.
The Palen Solar Electric Generating System’s (PSEGS) plans involved two CSP towers generating 250MW of energy each.
It is the fourth and final large-scale application in the US. Of those, only its Ivanpah CSP project has been developed.
The commission cited concerns over birdlife following indications that Ivanpah has scorched some passing birds.
“Petitioner argues that an attempt to predict and quantify the project’s potential avian mortality would be improper speculation. However, substantial evidence in the record leads us to the conclusion that avian mortality at the PSEGS project is a virtual certainty,” read the decision published by the commission.
“As of now, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) project is the only similar power plant using the power tower technology that has been certified by the California Energy Commission and built. To date, ISEGS has not operated at full capacity, but has already resulted in a number of bird deaths. Petitioner has not provided us with sufficient records to calculate a reasonable estimate of avian mortality at PSEGS,” it continued.
The report recommend the conversion of the site, which is on federal land, back to parabolic trough technology. The application by the original applicants for the site, which are now bankrupt, had originally suggested trough technology. The commission also suggested converting the site to a photovoltaic solar farm.
According to the 1000-page document detailing the commissions decision, Brightsource does not believe either of these options to be economically feasible given the conditions of its financing for the project.
During evidence giving it said: “Though the terms of the PPAs in question are indeed confidential, it can be stated with certainty that the PPAs in question do not allow for a change in technology without the requisite counterparty and CPUC approval, both would be a lengthy and uncertain process.”
The company also said that its interconnection agreement would need be changed which would also be “a lengthy process” and an amendment to either would mean the project could not be established in time to qualify for the Investment Tax Credit, which runs out in 2016.
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| 12/17/2013 | California recommends approval of Blythe solar PV project, denial of Palen solar CSP project |
The California Energy Commission (CEC) has released proposed decisions on conversion plans for both the 485 MW Blythe solar photovoltaic (PV) project and the 500 MW Palen concentrating solar power (CSP) project.
The agency recommends approval of the most recent plans for the Blythe PV project. However, CEC calls for denial of the proposal to convert the Palen CSP project to a solar power tower design, based on unmitigable impacts to cultural, visual and biological resources.
CEC has released both recommended decisions for 30 days of public comment, and the full set of commissioners will made a decision on both projects in early 2014.
Bird deaths a concern for Palen project
CEC initially approved the Palen CSP project in 2010 as a parabolic trough CSP plant. However, BrightSource Energy Inc. (Oakland, California, U.S.) purchased the plant in 2012, and has since decided to convert it to a solar power tower design, which requires CEC approval.
The new proposal calls for two, 230 meter solar towers and 170,000 heliostats. However, one of the major concerns over the Palen project voiced by the CEC is “significant and unmitigable impacts to biological resources due to the risk of solar flux on avian species.”
This is not the first time that the agency has expressed such concerns. CEC has shown an increasing concern over bird deaths from the concentrated sunlight focused from the heliostats on the towers at BrightSource's nearby Ivanpah project, which is nearly complete.
Benefits outweigh impacts for Blythe project
The Blythe project was also approved in 2010 as a parabolic trough CSP plant. Previous owner Solar Millennium AG had planned to change the plant to PV technology, and NextEra Energy Resources LLC (Juno Beach, Florida, U.S.) further changed the plans to reduce the plant from 1,000 MW to 485 MW.
This change also requires CEC approval. While this latest CEC assessment has found some environmental impacts that are cumulatively significant when considered with other projects in the region, it also found that project benefits justify an override of those impacts.
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| 6/28/2013 | Preliminary Staff Assessment Released for
Palen Solar Electric Generating System Project |
The California Energy Commission staff today released its preliminary analysis of the proposed Palen Solar Electric Generating System project.
In the preliminary staff assessment (PSA), Commission staff concluded that, in all but nine technical sections, with the implementation of recommended mitigation measures described in the conditions of certification, the proposed 500-megawatt (MW) solar thermal power tower project would comply with all applicable laws, ordinances, regulations, and standards (LORS) and that environmental impacts would be less than significant.
The nine technical areas with either a significant, unmitigated impact, LORS non-compliance, or outstanding issues that need to be resolved through additional data, further discussion and/or analysis are: air quality/greenhouse gases; biological resources; cultural resources; geology and paleontology; socioeconomics; traffic and transportation; visual resources; waste management; and worker safety and fire protection.
The PSA serves as the staff's initial evaluation of the environmental, engineering, public health and safety impacts of the proposed facility. The PSA is not a decision nor does it contain final findings of the Commission related to the environmental impacts or the project's compliance with local, state and federal legal requirements.
After receiving public comments and conducting public workshops on the PSA, Commission staff will publish a final staff assessment, which will serve as staff's testimony at evidentiary hearings conducted by the committee of two commissioners reviewing the proposed project. The committee will issue a proposed decision based on evidence presented at the hearings. The proposed decision will be presented to the full Commission for a final decision.
In December 2010, the Commission approved the 500-MW Palen Solar Power Project, which would use parabolic trough technology. In December 2012, the new project owner filed an amendment with the Commission requesting to change the technology from parabolic trough to solar power tower.
The applicant for the amended project, now called the Palen Solar Electric Generating System, is Palen Solar Holdings, LLC, a joint venture of BrightSource Energy, Inc. and Abengoa.
The proposed project consists of two 250-MW solar plants for a total of 500 MW. Each plant would have about 85,000 heliostats for a total of 170,000 heliostats. Heliostats are elevated mirrors used to focus the sun's rays on a solar receiver which produces steam to generate electricity. The solar receiver would be located atop a 750-foot tall power tower near the center of each solar field.
The project site is located about 10 miles east of Desert Center, halfway between Indio and Blythe, in eastern Riverside County. The applicant is seeking a right-of-way grant for approximately 5,200 acres of federal public land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management which is separately reviewing the project under the National Environmental Policy Act. In addition to the technology change, the amended project was reconfigured to 3,794 acres, a smaller footprint than either of the two alternative configurations approved in the original Commission decision.
The project owner has provided an estimated capital cost for construction of the project as $2 billion.
If the Commission approves the Palen amendment, the project owner plans to start construction during the fourth quarter of 2013 with commercial operation in June 2016. The project would average 998 workers during construction with a peak of 2,311. Up to 100 workers would be needed when the project is operational, according to the project owner.
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| 3/18/2013 | Abengoa Solar, BrightSource Partner on World’s Biggest CSP Power Tower Project |
Two of the most important players in concentrating solar power (CSP) will partner on the most ambitious solar power tower project yet planned.
Spain’s Abengoa Solar (PINK:ABGOY), which has already built 743 megawatts of operating CSP tower and trough projects, will partner with California’s BrightSource Energy (BSE), which is in the process of completing its first utility-scale solar power tower in the Mojave Desert. The pair will jointly develop the two-tower, 500-megawatt Palen Solar Electric Generating System.
This is a new chapter in Palen’s story. It was permitted as a PV project owned by the now bankrupt Solar Trust, then acquired in bankruptcy proceedings by BSE in June of last year. BSE applied to the California Energy Commission (CEC) last December for a permit amendment allowing the change of CSP methods.
The Palen project will be designed by BSE and incorporate its second-generation 750-foot-tall towers using pressurized steam and air-cooled technology, but will not have storage capability.
“What BrightSource does best, where we want to deploy our capital,” explained BSE Senior Communications Director Keely Wachs, “is in technology development and deployment.”
Abengoa will handle the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), a phase that is optimistically targeted for the end of this year and expected to employ up to 2,000. After the project's 2016 completion (which would be in time to qualify Palen for the 30 percent federal investment tax credit), Abengoa will also oversee operations and maintenance (O&M).
“We were the EPC on Coalinga,” BSE's Wachs said. “We had no place doing that and it cost us. But we always looked at that as a demonstration facility, and when you go through those processes, you learn a lot. What we learned is that if we can share project development costs, we can use our capital and resources on technology.”
“We are one of the few companies in the world comfortable with both tower and trough technologies," explained Abengoa Solar U.S. General Manager Armando Zuluaga. "At Palen, we are joining BrightSource in their development. We did our due diligence and invested. At the time they decided to use tower technology, we were not involved.”
But, Zuluaga added, “The fact that we are joining BrightSource in this project doesn’t mean we are abandoning trough technology."
As the EPC contractor, Abengoa just brought on-line Shams 1, a 100-megawatt UAE trough facility and now the world’s biggest operating single-site CSP installation, in conjunction with multinational energy giant Total (NYSE:TOT) and Middle Eastern renewables mega-entrepreneur Masdar.
“In South Africa,” Zuluaga noted, "we are building a 100-megawatt trough plant in parallel with a 50-megawatt tower project, in different locations at the same time. The decision of using one technology or the other is made on a case-by-case basis.”
The companies will work together on permitting and financing.
Permitting, which is always challenging in California, will be easier because Palen is in a DOI Solar Energy Zone in Riverside County. The second-generation BSE design may also help with permitting because the tower height, twice that of the three at BSE’s 372-megawatt Ivanpah complex, will allow for a heliostat field that is 13 percent smaller than the CEC-greenlighted Solar Trust PV project.
Financing is a different matter. A major positive is the fact that Palen already has a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with PG&E for the plant’s full 500-megawatt nameplate capacity.
Both Wachs and Zuluaga downplayed potential obstacles to financing. “Securing finance is a challenge today for any kind of project, but Abengoa has been really successful in securing financing for different projects in different geographies around the world. We are confident we will be successful in this one."
But success at obtaining financing in the era of DOE loan guarantees -- both Solana ($1.45 billion) and Mojave Solar ($1.2 billion) benefited from them -- does not mean financing will come readily for multi-billion-dollar ambitions in today’s post-loan-guarantee CSP marketplace. Just ask SolarReserve CEO Kevin Smith, who is still shopping for backers for permitted tower projects in California, Arizona, and Colorado. The 150-megawatt Rice project in California even has a PPA with PG&E.
But no financing.
One final note: In partnering with Abengoa for EPC services, BSE moved on from multinational contracting giant Bechtel, its partner at Ivanpah.
Does that mean BSE is dissatisfied with Bechtel, or that Bechtel, which is also doing EPC at several important photovoltaic solar power plants, has changed its take on CSP?
“Bechtel has been an incredible EPC contractor at Ivanpah,” Wachs said in answer to the question of whether there is a rift between the two, “and Abengoa being the EPC contractor at Palen does not rule out Bechtel building other solar power towers with us elsewhere around the world.”
“Bechtel remains committed to solar thermal and solar PV,” Bechtel President of Renewables Jim Ivany replied in answer to the question of whether his company has changed its take on CSP. “We are nearing completion on two of the largest solar facilities in the world, including Ivanpah and California Valley Solar Ranch, in addition to the Catalina Solar Photovoltaic Generating Project. We look forward to building future projects in both market segments.”
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| 3/15/2013 | Abengoa and BrightSource Energy partner to build the world’s two largest solar power towers |
Abengoa (MCE: ABG.B), the international company that applies innovative technology solutions for sustainable development in the energy and environment sectors, and BrightSource Energy, a leading concentrating solar thermal technology company, today signed an agreement to jointly develop, build and operate the world’s two largest solar power towers in California.
As joint partners, the two pioneers in solar power tower technology will work together to permit and finance the 500 MW Palen Solar Electric Generating System. Abengoa will build the plants as the Engineering, Procurement and Construction contractor, and will lead the operation and maintenance (O & M) of the plants once online. BrightSource will provide the solar field technology and plant design.
The Palen project consists of two 250 MW units located in a Department of Interior Solar Energy Zone in Riverside County, California. Together the plants will produce enough electricity to power 200,000 households and will prevent the emission of about 17 million tons of CO2 over its life cycle.
With permitting and development under way, construction is expected to begin at the end of 2013 and will create more than 2,000 jobs. The solar plants are expected to come online in 2016.
Solar power towers generate power the same way as traditional power plants – by creating high temperature steam to turn a turbine. However, instead of using fossil fuels or nuclear power to create the steam, they use the sun’s energy. At the heart of the system is a state-of-the-art solar field design, optimization software and a control system that allow for the creation of high temperature steam. The steam is then integrated with conventional power plant turbines to produce predictable, reliable and cost-competitive clean energy.
The Palen site has already received authorization from the California Energy Commission (CEC) for construction and operation of a 500 MW solar thermal project. In December 2012, BrightSource filed an amendment to the existing permit seeking authorization to deploy solar power tower technology.
Converting the project to solar power tower technology and low impact design will result in significantly less impacts than would have occurred under the original permits. The new design will reduce the project footprint by 13 percent, from 4,366 acres to approximately 3,800 acres, and use 50 percent less water by deploying a dry-cooling technology.
Each unit at Palen will feature a 750-foot tall tower that allows for a high concentration of heliostats. This design significantly reduces the amount of land required to produce energy - up to 33 percent less than a typical photovoltaic (PV) farm. Additionally, the design places mirrors on individual poles placed directly into the ground without concrete foundations, allowing the solar field to be built around the natural contours of the land, to retain native vegetation under the mirrors, and to avoid areas of sensitive vegetation.
Abengoa and BrightSource are both leaders in solar tower technologies and are pooling their collective experience. Abengoa operates four solar towers in Southern Europe, including the first in commercial operation worldwide since 2007, and is currently building a fifth tower in South Africa. The company currently has 743 MW of installed solar capacity around the world and 910 MW under construction. It is one of the few companies in the world that builds and operates both parabolic trough and tower CSP plants. BrightSource has solar towers in operation in Coalinga, CA, and in the Negev Desert and its technology is currently being deployed at the 377 MW Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the largest solar tower facility under construction in the world.
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