Luz Power Towers
Southern California Edison just inked a deal with BrightSource for the largest solar installation in the world – 1,300 megawatts.
SoCal Edison sees it as a hedge against fluctuating natural gas prices:
Southern California Edison’s Hemphill said that the new plants would provide a valuable hedge against volatile natural gas prices, noting that his company had seen natural gas prices as low as $4 per thousand
millioncubic feet (a standard industry measure) and as high as $16. Given the variability of natural gas pricing, Hemphill said that his company did not expect the solar thermal electricity to exceed the market cost of electricity in California.
Now, I don’t really believe that estimate, but ahh.. whatever, this is pretty cool anyway.
What I like about it is that it doesn’t use photovotaics (fancy chemicals that convert sunlight to electricity). Instead, it does what we’ve known how to do forever – convert water to steam and use the resulting motion to turn a turbine that makes electricity. That is how most electricity is made today, the only difference in this is the heat source.
I suppose Southern Utah might be a decent spot for this, but transmission costs to places that need electricity are large, and most markets are already near a sunny desert (like the one used in the deal above).
So I like this deal, but I don’t think the physics currently work to my areas favor for similar arrangements.
February 12th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
What reason is there to favor one form of energy conversion over the other? The key is conversion efficiency measured in cost per unit of delivered power at the point of use. Turning sunlight into electrical power through steam turbines is not very efficient and has little room to improve. Direct conversion from photons to electricity has a lot of room to improve and many ideas for doing so.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
It is cheaper and it works now. I agree with your assessment long term. I like that this project used something they thought viable now versus being wasteful and using technology that wasn’t ready.
I agree photovoltaics has more room to improve, it just isn’t there yet.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:37 am
A decision to invest in the current technology isn’t so clear. While it may be cheaper than a solar alternative now (is it really?), it may not be cheap enough to compete with conventional power if a replacement looms on the horizon. What is the capital cost, and over what period should the turbine plant be amortized? Such a calculation requires predicting the future cost of the conventional power which relies on a fuel with high cost variability. Tricky business, this energy investment game.
February 13th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I agree. And the organization in question has a dubious record of unwise investing.