Economic, energy, and environmental benefits of concentrating solar power in California, May 2005-April 2006

Original publisher: Golden, Colo. : National Renewable Energy Laboratory, [2006] OCLC Number: (OCoLC)214329356 Subject: Solar power plants -- Economic aspects. Excerpt: ... NREL CA Solar Benefits CSP Technology Assessment 2.2 Commercial Status of Technologies The largest group of solar systems in the world is the Solar Energy Generating Systems ( SEGS ) I through IX parabolic trough plants in the Mohave Desert in southern California. The SEGS plants were built between 1985 and 1991 and have a total capacity of 354 MW. These plants have generally performed well over their 15 to 20 years of operation. There are several other commercial trough projects in the planning or active project development stage, including a 64 MW plant in Nevada and several 50 MW plants in Spain. Integrated Solar Combined Cycle Systems ( ISCCS ) are in various stages of planning in southern California, India, Egypt, Morocco, Mexico, and Algeria. A 1 MW trough plant was recently constructed for Arizona Public Service ( APS ), and is currently in startup. There are no operating commercial dish-Stirling power plants. Recently, installation was completed on a six dish test deployment at Sandia National Laboratories ( SNL ) in Albuquerque. This development is under a joint agreement between Stirling Engine Systems ( SES ) ( Phoenix ) and SNL. On August 2, 2005, Southern California Edison publicly announced the completion of negotiations on a 20-year power purchase agreement with SES for between 500 to 850 MW of capacity ( producing 1,182 to 2,010 GWh per year ) using parabolic dish units. On September 7, 2005, SES announced a contract with San Diego Gas & Electric to provide between 300 and 900 MW of solar power using the dish technology. Pricing for these power purchase agreements remains confidential. These large deployments of dish Stirling systems are expected to drastically reduce capital and O & M costs and to result in increased system reliability. There are no commercial power...