REGION: Irish developer backs desert solar farm
By DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer | ∞
An Irish developer of green energy announced Thursday that it is investing $100 million and taking controlling interest in Phoenix-based Stirling Energy Systems, which wants to build what would be the world's two largest solar farms in the Southern California desert.
Bruce Osborn, Stirling's chief executive officer, said that the investment amounts to 42 percent of the firm's $240 million value and that the investor ---- NTR ---- was given four votes on Stirling's seven-member board.
One of the solar farms would be in the Imperial Valley, 10 miles west of El Centro. With an initial capacity to generate 300 megawatts and the ability later to produce 900, the $1.5 billion venture is the single-largest project that San Diego Gas & Electric Co. is counting on to help the utility shift to a greener future.
SDG&E, like California's other major urban utilities, faces a state mandate to deliver 20 percent of its electricity from clean, renewable, power by 2010.
Stirling officials say that they can deliver the initial 300 megawatts via the existing Southwest Powerlink transmission line through southern San Diego County, but will need the 1,000-megawatt Sunrise Powerlink proposed for North County to bring in the rest.
Jim Barry, chief executive of NTR, an international developer of green energy that was founded in Ireland in 1978 and is headquartered in Dublin, said the Stirling proposal is likely to succeed despite some solar experts' doubts about its commercial viability.
"It doesn't need to go through a pilot stage," Barry said in a telephone interview. "There is enough known about this technology now to gear it up for mass production. Now, will there be challenges in doing that? Absolutely."
But Barry said he is confident the challenges will be overcome.
Critics are not so sure.
David Hogan, conservation manager for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that opposes the Sunrise power line, said by e-mail that "Stirling Energy Systems Inc. pops up occasionally with a press release touting their ethereal desert project as ready for prime time. And the project forms nearly the entire basis for SDG&E's claims that the Sunrise Powerlink will deliver renewable energy."
But the reality, said Hogan, is that the ambitious solar project is not likely to succeed by 2010, when green power is supposed to account for 20 percent of SDG&E's electricity supply.
"The Stirling project is a desert mirage," Hogan said.
Barry begged to differ.
"The $100 million is not a mirage," Barry said. "You can speak to my bank manager about that."
The solar farm along Interstate 8 would be fitted initially with 12,000 mirrored dishes, and ultimately 36,000 spread out over nearly 8 square miles of U.S. Bureau of Land Management land, Osborn said.
In addition to the Imperial Valley solar farm, Stirling is proposing to build a similar-sized array of mirrored dishes that capture and concentrate the sun's rays and generate electricity in the Mojave Desert east of Barstow. The company calls its system, pioneered in New Mexico at the U.S. Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories, the SunCatcher.
The Mojave Desert project is intended to supply Southern California Edison customers.
At peak size, the two arrays of dishes would combine to generate 1,750 megawatts ---- equal to a third of the electricity San Diego County residents use on a hot summer day.
But Stirling won't generate any power without state and federal permits.
Barry said the company will apply to the California Energy Commission for those in June, in the case of the Imperial Valley project, and in September for the Mojave Desert farm.
"I would say we're about two years away from being able to build," Barry said, adding that construction would then take 12 months. That means the 300-megawatt first phase won't be completed until 2011.
However, Osborn said, the farm actually will begin producing electricity in 2010, because each dish can stand on its own, and gradually ramp up to 300 megawatts during construction.
Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 745-6611, Ext. 2623, or ddowney@nctimes.com.
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mathias wrote on Apr 17, 2008 3:30 PM:Mr. Downey you continue to write articles under the assumption that sdg&e plans to provide green energy e.g. solar,wind via the fraudulent sunrise powerlink proposal. Have you not done your research and seen the writing on the wall? LNG facility on the coast of baja, importing foreign fossil fuel, continuing our dependance on other nations for our energy. Second, the powerlines going nearly to the border to existing and future Mexican power plants which have much more lax environmental standards than our power plants. SDGE/Sempra are heavily invested int fossil fuels and their transport! You are doing the citizenry a diservice telling them,"gee whiz why are people oppossing the largest solar array in So Cal?". Finally even if Stirling Solar or it's irish successor weren't simply a token glitch-laden beta prototype, crossing through a state, national or local park is as unsustainable and ungreen as you can get. enough already!
Kelly wrote on Apr 17, 2008 4:17 PM:Stirling Energy Systems has repeatedly delayed filing the necessary permit applications with the California Energy Commission and U.S. Bureau of Land Management. As of last month, the estimate was that the project application would be filed at the CEC by June 2008. The El Centro office of the U.S. Bureau of Land management is currently reviewing an environmental assessment (EA) provided by SES for geotechnical testing associated with the solar project for SDG&E. This is SES's second try. The previous EA was rejected by the BLM. If this EA is judged adequate, the BLM will put the document out for public comment. If you'd like to be notified when the public comment period starts, call the El Centro BLM at (760)337-4400 and ask to be put on the notification list.
Long wrote on Apr 17, 2008 5:27 PM:We all should go with the solar roof for every building and this would eliminate the need for that power transmission link.
GreenFuture wrote on Apr 18, 2008 9:27 AM:This is great news for San Diego! How can people who claim to be environmentalists oppose this project? They should be doing everything in their power to help make it a reality! I think thy are more interested in hurting Sempra than they are in truly helping the environment. I challenge them to examine their motives.
Nelson wrote on Apr 24, 2008 9:28 AM:We need more information about the proposed site(s) in the Mojave project(s).
Where, when, how, who.
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