World's Largest Solar Power Plant Planned in Arizona

CoStar News ^ | Feb. 29, 2008 | Phillip Majarucon

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Abengoa Solar Purchases 3,000 Acres for $1 Billion Solana Generating Plant

Abengoa Solar, a Spanish-based solar energy company, has purchased roughly 3,000 acres near Gila Bend, AZ, where it intends to develop the world's largest solar power plant.

An investment entity associated with Brandon Wolfswinkel of Tempe, AZ, sold the land for $45.12 million, or about $14,700 per acre.

Abengoa Solar, which has solar plants in Spain and northern Africa, will construct and operate the 280-megawatt, $1 billion facility known as the Solana Generating Plant. The plant will use thousands of giant mirrors covering 1,900 acres to harness the sun's heat (rather than its light) to turn steam turbines, generating electricity.

The plant is scheduled to go into production in 2011. It will be able to power 70,000 households while avoiding more than 400,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, according to Abengoa.

Arizona Public Service, the state's largest utility, has agreed to purchase the energy from Abengoa over the next 30 years. "This is a major milestone for Arizona in our efforts to increase the amount of renewable energy available in the United States," stated Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano. "Arizona is leading the way in protecting our world for future generations through increasing the amount of renewable energy, combating climate change, fighting for air quality and much more. This plant will offer Arizonans a clean and efficient source of energy."

[marktwain]

“Ah, but how much land is required to hold the batteries needed to store energy for night time and cloudy-day use?”

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Very little, because in Arizona, peak use is during the afternoon, with air conditioning. Solar power makes lots of sense for the desert southwest.

[JasonC]

Methink precious little would grow there, unless you like cactus. It is a desert.

[NicknamedBob]

"Heat loss and molten metal flow resistance losses through the miles of small bore piping between the collectors and the central “boiler” is not going to be pretty. Probably solvable, but not cheaply or efficiently solvable."

This indicates that you think they will be using individually concentrating panels. I don't think that is the plan. They seem to using flat panel reflectors to concentrate on a single tower.

That will allow the flow pipes to be large bore instead of small. Losses, yes, but differently calculated.

Were this my design, I would use cable connectors between the panels to gang them together instead of using more expensive individual controls.

There would still be many hundreds of control points, but I would use an optimal mix of motor size and number of panels controlled.

[Tammy8]

I find it hard to believe since at one time I could have bought land there for next to nothing- but seems land is high there, found this in a real estate listing:

Land
In or near Gila Bend, Arizona
2 sections (1,240 acres) of production farmland for sale in Gila Bend. Property brings in appx. $60,000 per year from farm production (Currently i...Status:
Price:
Lot Size:
Primary Type:
Sub-Type: Active
$12,400,000
1,240.00 Acres
Land
Residential (land)

Also not too hard to see why farmers are selling out- it would take a lot of years of farming to equal what they can get for the land.

[marktwain]

There is some good discussion in the thread about the advantages of the land being near an existing major power transmission line. This makes a lot of sense. My land is quite close to an existing line, but at 2 miles away, is might still be too far... However, the price has already went up 10-20x and with the only refinery to be built in 30 years hopefully coming in 12 miles away, maybe another 2-3x multiple is possible.

[JasonC]

That is why they aren't building them in the great lakes region.

If you do the math and assume 12 hours a day, 365 days a year, and 10 cents a kw hr, you get a 12.24% gross return on investment. 6.12% at 5 cents per kw hr. Easily a third of that might go to operating costs for transmission, maintenance, personnel etc. It will about pay for itself, and give a real return only if electricity costs rise.

Better returns can definitely be achieved with coal fired plants. It is the regulatory climate and carbon tax rattling by greens that lead to this choice instead. Which means we are paying in an economic sense to put a little less CO2 into the atmosphere, which really doesn't care. That much is typical green boondoggle. But it is fine on a pilot scale, to test the technology.

[willgolfforfood]

Oh, baby! T'would that it were so!!

My average monthly electric bill for that last 10 years is probably $150. That's for a well insulated house of about 2000 sq. ft, in Texas. My A/C is rated only about 4-4.5 tons cooling. Many bigger homes in Texas probably have 7.5 to 10 tons capacity of A/C.

Over the past 3 years, the average monthly bill is probably running the $200 mentioned previously.

I've lived through about 50 Texas summers. There's NOTHING Al Gore can teach me about global warming!!!

[Robert A Cook PE]

Electric actuators on the panel sections (running elec power to the many separate actuators rather than hydraulic fluid) makes more sense - particularly in a drier desert environment.

The net reflected sunshine from each succeeding outer row of the collectors needs to be factored in: we will get increasingly less energy from each sq meter of reflector as distance from the reflector to the central collector increases, but support costs for those rows rise even faster. Thus, there is a natural limit to how much area can be economically assigned to each central collector: doubling collector area doesn’t double energy received.

[Cyber Liberty]

I really don’t know enough about the technical specifications to get into that level of discussion. Heck, the first I heard of this, the news flunkies were reporting it as 3 miles^2 of solar-voltaic cells, which made less than zero sense to me at the time.

[Shirerwasright]

I am more concerned about the long term effect to soil and bacterium in the soil when the radiant light and heat is cut off by the mirror panals.

Aside from the fact it can not generate enough power per sf, it covers the land with panels.

[rb22982]

I don’t think there is really any land for crops in the desert.

[NoLibZone]

"If we grow corn for fuel and take up land for solar power; where do we grow our food? We are losing a lot of farm land to housing"

For 2007 FarmBill we have 35m acres that are set aside NOT to grow.

[rb22982]

Over 30 years, that would a cost of $40/month/family. I’m sure that would net them a nice profit after a while with an average electric bill probably far larger than $100. That’s assuming the cost stays at $1 billion and I have no idea what the annual cost would be. Most likely they’ll double their money-—but that’s really that good for a 30 year investment.

[rb22982]

Wow, whose average electric bill is $30-$40/month? Mine is close to $125-$140/month on a 2k sq foot well insulated house (and our heat comes from Nat Gas, not electricity) and I only cool 2/3 of the house (basement is on a seperate system) and I keep the temperatures WAY below/above (depending on season) the ‘average.’ NC has very competitive Kwh rates too. I’d say $200/month in Arizona is probably accurate for a normal house.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[NoLibZone]

"Please to be making no efforts to diversify and researching various non Arab.. I meaning non Fossil fuels energy"

[palmer]

My bill maxed out at $35 during peak A/C (thermostat set to 78). My off-season bill was $25 and my winter bill is about $30 with electric hot water (most of my heat is wood and the rest is propane with forced air). My house is also 2k square feet on one floor, insulated with fiberglass between 2x6 in the walls and about 10-12 inches thick in the ceiling and crawl space.

[rb22982]

Wow, I don’t know anyone that pays less than $60/month and those people live in 600-800 sq ft apartments. Just off TVs, Frig, lights, microwave, stove/oven, showers (our water heat is electric as well), 2 computer, and washer/dryer, our electric bill is far higher than that and we even use CFLs. You must have very few appliances (either that or some insanely energy efficient ones) and never leave the lights on. Mine would probably be $20-$30/lower if my wife and sister in law (whose living with us currently) didn’t take 2 showers a day frequently.

[rb22982]

Any idea what your Kwh rate is?

[driftdiver]

“Wow! You have a probelm for every solution!”

Solution? I don’t see any solutions here. I do see clever marketing and ignorance of the economics of power production.

Wishful thinking won’t change reality and neither will prower production models straight out of the movies.