Acciona Energy is quickly becoming a major player in utility-scale solar thermal installations in the U.S. West. The company, a division of Acciona of Spain, recently opened Nevada Solar One, a $266 million 64-megawatt (MW) plant in Boulder, Nevada, that is the largest solar thermal plant built in the last 16 years.
Now they have announced plans to build another plant, three times larger, either in New Mexico, Arizona or Nevada.
Peter Duprey, Acciona Energy’s CEO says he believes centralized solar-thermal plants will overtake the capacity of roof-mounted photovoltaic (PV) panels around the year 2017.
“The US has this vast solar resource in the Southwest that makes solar thermal a lot more of an interesting play than solar PV,” he told Reuters.
Acciona has invested in both solar thermal and solar PV installations, and according to Duprey, the power generated by solar thermal is about half the cost (15 cents per kilowatt hour) of that produced by PV panels.
The company’s new facility will produce approximately 200 MW. Duprey says sites in Arizona are tempting because the power could easily be linked to the grid to supply either Phoenix or California, where demand for clean energy is perhaps the greatest. California has set ambitious goals for renewable energy generation and is against importing energy from out-of-state, coal-fired generators.
Solar thermal plants use vast arrays of mirrors to focus sunlight on water or other liquids to produce steam, which then powers standard electricity-producing turbines. The technology uses no silicon, which, due to worldwide shortages, is largely responsible for the higher cost of PV installations.
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