Abengoa Solar signed a power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) to supply the electricity generated by a new concentrating solar plant in the Mojave Desert.
The 250 MW Mohave Solar plant will be located 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The project is expected to create 1,200 solar jobs and, when completed, approximately 80 permanent jobs.
When it begins operations in 2013, it will generate nearly as much electricity as all of California’s present-day commercial CSP installations combined, enough to power about 90,000 average homes.
The project will be sited on 1,765 acres of private, previously disturbed land that had been farmed since the 1920s but is now largely fallow. The solar plant will use significantly less water per acre than was used for agricultural purposes.
The location was carefully chosen and the plant has been specifically configured to minimize environmental impacts on the desert, said Scott Frier, COO of Abengoa Solar.
Construction will begin by the end of 2010, subject to financing under the U.S. economic stimulus legislation.
Abengoa Solar parabolic trough technology maximizes power production in trough plants, according to the company. Parabolic mirrors are arranged in long troughs and track the sun’s movement continually during the day, concentrating solar radiation onto a heat-absorbing pipe at the focal point of the mirrors. A heat transfer fluid circulating inside the pipe reaches temperatures of over 700 degrees Fahrenheit. This heat is then used to generate steam that drives a conventional steam turbine.
In addition to the Mojave Solar Project in California and the Solana Project in Arizona, Abengoa Solar has seven CSP plants under construction or operation and others under development. In August 2009, Abengoa Solar was selected by Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest electric utility, to build a demonstration parabolic trough concentrating solar power plant at its Cameo coal plant near Grand Junction, Colorado. Abengoa Solar has also used recently parabolic trough technology to make industrial process heat for a major food processor to cook snacks in Modesto, CA and for the U.S. Department of Energy to treat contaminated groundwater in Tuba City, AZ.
Abengoa Solar’s U.S. headquarters are in Lakewood, CO and has offices in Arizona and California. The company is a subsdiary of Abengoa, based in Spain.
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