Feds Approve Two California Solar Plants on Public Land

[David Zephyr]

Source: AP

SAN FRANCISCO — For the first time, federal land managers gave final approval Tuesday for the construction of two large solar installations on public lands that could power hundreds of thousands of homes with renewable energy.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the projects in Southern California involve a square mile of glimmering solar panels near Victorville and a large array of satellite dish-like sun catchers covering about 10 square miles in the remote Imperial Valley.

Both could start transmitting electricity to the state grid by the end of 2011 or early 2012.

The approval came soon after California regulators passed new rules requiring utilities to derive a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020, the most aggressive standards in the U.S.

At full capacity, the two facilities would generate power for up to 566,000 homes and create almost 1,000 new jobs, officials said.



Read more: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_16259445?source=rss

[wakemewhenitsover]

1. K&R -- Let the sun shine

B-)

[XemaSab]

2. Public risk, private profit

n/t

[msongs]

3. rooftop solar!! no corporate whore solar power nt

[harmonicon]

4. no reason there can't be both

What about people - and I know this is hard to believe in California - who live in apartment buildings? The one stand alone house I lived in in California was a cheap rental. I doubt the landlord would have sprung for solar panels. Other places I lived in were condos or apartments.

[JDPriestly]

6. We need both rooftop and corporate solar power.

[shanti]

5. it just makes too much sense

for it not to happen here in cali. think of all the jobs...go green!

[Jack_Lindsay]

7. More solar hype

The article states: "When complete, the two projects could generate enough energy to power as many as 566,000 homes."

Articles by solar and wind power advocates almost always carry a breathless statistic about the vast number of homes that can be powered by their projects. Let's take a look at the actual data to see just how realistic their numbers are, shall we?
------------------------------
From the U.S. census at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahsfaq.html

Q. How many housing units are there in the United States?
A. There were 128,203,000 housing units in the United States in 2007. Approximately 110,692,000 were occupied as regular residences and 17,511,000 were vacant or seasonal.
So that means there are almost exactly 3 people per home (if you consider regular residences).
------------------------------
From http://coal2nuclear.com/energy_facts.htm
In 2005 the United States consumed 4.04 billion megawatt hours (mWh.) of electric energy. Dividing that by the 296 million people then in the United States gives an average annual consumption of 13.6 mWh per American, about 1,550 watts, 24 hours a day.
------------------------------
At 3 people per home, that would require about 40 MWh per home annually, or .040 GWh.

So how many GWh do you get per 100MW power plant capacity?
24 hours/day x 365.25 = 8766 hours/yr.
8766 hours x 100MW = 876,600 MWh, or 876 GWh/yr.

If one home requires .04 GWh/year, a 100MW power plant will therefore provide for the needs of about 22,000 home— assuming it's running at a capacity factor of 100%.
Nuclear power plants run at a capacity factor of about 90% or better in the USA. Wind runs between 20-30%, depending on location. Solar gets about 20%.

So looking at the two solar projects described in the article: 754MW x 25% capacity factor (generous, since Arizona gets only about 19%, see http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/solar-versus-wind-power.php ) = about 188MW, enough to power about 41,360 homes. The article says 566,000 homes, an exaggeration of almost 14 times! What's probably a more realistic projection at a 20% capacity factor would yield an effective generating capacity of just 151MW, enough to power about 33,000 homes, over 17 times less than the alleged capacity.

Enough with the hype!

[kristopher]

8. That is nuclear industry hype - thanks for sharing.

Nuclear power is a third rate solution to climate change and energy security issues.
We know that because we can and have measured ALL the relevant variables. There is a lot of nuclear industry prepared information that is designed to help the sales force of the nuclear industry do their job. However little of it can withstand close scrutiny.

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[Jack_Lindsay]

10. Jacobson is a joke!

kristopher, that "study" by Jacobson is something that you should be embarrassed to cite. But I'll let you judge for yourself—take a look at this:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/11/03/wws-2030-critique/

[fluffybunnyp35]

9. Sure hope solar tech is successful

I sure hope that better technology for solar and other renewable power really takes off. Highly efficient solar would be great.