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Michael Kanellos | October 12, 2009 at 4:18 PM 10 Comments

A 1GW PV and Solar Thermal Plant for the DOD

Not only will it be big, it will involve the two main types of solar.

Acciona Solar Power, Clark Energy Group and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will begin development of a 1-gigawatt plus power plant at Fort Irwin in California this Thursday.

The plant will include both photovoltaic panels as well as mirrors and turbines for solar thermal power. Consider this the wave of the future. Some companies are already moving toward hybrid power plants which combine gas turbines with solar thermal systems to keep a more constant flow of power on cloudy days. A PV-thermal farm ideally will let landholders maximize their real estate by plunking down solar panels in corners of land where more thermal equipment might not make sense.

Acciona built Nevada Solar One, the 64-megawatt plant outside of Las Vegas that helped reinvigorate solar thermal in the U.S. It is building more plants in various global locations.

The Army considers it a pilot project to meet its energy policy, which calls for conservation and the promotion of alternative energy generation. (More details on the project at that link.) Like the U.S. Department of the Interior, which is setting aside land for solar power development, the military also intends to make some of its vast land holdings available for all types of renewable energy generation.

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Comments [10]

  • Ozzie Zehner 10/12/09 5:17 PM

    Reconsidering Solar
    Ozzie Zehner

    We have to consider if it is reasonable to spend escalating sums of cash to install solar technologies that are in the stone-age of their development when we could instead be investing that money into the very research and development activities that could some day make them a viable solution for a broader populace.

    Current solar cell technologies necessitate large up-front investments and vast quantities of mined minerals for their manufacture.  Not only are solar cells a terribly expensive way to reduce CO2 emissions, but their manufacturing process is one of the largest emitters of hexafluroethane (C2F6), nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) – three gruesome greenhouse gasses that make CO2 seem harmless.  Furthermore, solar cells are difficult to install, require regular cleanings and rely on a thinly-spread solar radiation from a sun that only shines half of the day, a cosmological constant showing no signs of improving.

    For solar-based energy to make an impact, we will have to shift funding away from fabrication and toward research and development, implement passive solar techniques on a much larger scale, update building codes, and plant trees (the ultimate solar mechanism).

    Ozzie Zehner

    Ozzie Zehner is an energy consultant ZehnerStudio.com and the Executive Director of Imagitrends.com, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

     Reply
      • bill 10/12/09 7:25 PM

        Ozzie, Oh boy… Politics! Not sure who is this “we” you refer to, but I doubt the Army Corps of engineers will take marching orders from them.. Also, maybe you should post an actual top level article somewhere instead of polluting the comment sections with your tangents..
        p.s. “Paranoid” was by far your best album..
  • JoeJoe 10/13/09 7:55 AM

    No… Ozzie is right! PV is gruesome. SF6 oh my… That is a truly gruesome gas that has no place in the electrical industry.

    Don’t bogart that joint my friend… Pass it… Seriously… Pass it…

     Reply
  • scott 10/13/09 1:18 PM

    Im guessing the majority of the plant will be Solar Thermal, which does not have the issues of PV. Lets not forget that.

     Reply
  • observer 10/13/09 9:28 PM

    1. “is it reasonable to spend escalating sums of cash to install solar technologies”

    Yea maybe we just need to send most of our armed forces to the middle east to steal more oil.
    That’s worked well. Cheap too.

    Or we could build nuclear and bury the waste under your house. Or just pretend there is no waste.
    Pretending is cheap. hmmm

     Reply
  • fireofenergy 10/23/09 4:58 PM

    I don’t think that solar cells, even in the mass quantities that “Ozzy could smoke” would even be detrimental at all to the entire biosphere as compared to CO2. “Currently” is also a non applicable! What is detrimental, however is the lack of support for VIRAL solar (you know, the kind built by robots as are cars are today) Oh, we don’t have that yet, do we?) We do, however, we have the LiFePo4 battery that is nearing utility scale implementation. Their raw materials are cheper and more abundent than that of any other battery. It is the enviro safest and is the only with thousands of charge cycles.

    Once all of the lawsuits are settled, it should become the framework of the totally solid state green grid!

    We need to demand mass robotic LiFePo4 and solar cell (or dish) manufacture!

     Reply

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