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Two New Solar Projects in US and EU:

Source: http://sunpowereddreams.com

By: pinkhat
December 30th, 2007

According to an article in The New Zealand Herald of 12/04/07, “Europe is considering plans to spend more than £5 billion ($13.5 billion) on a string of giant solar power stations along the Mediterranean desert in northern Africa and the Middle East. More than a hundred of the generators, each fitted with thousands of huge mirrors, would generate electricity to be transmitted by undersea cable to Europe and then distributed across the continent to EU member nations. Billions of watts of power could be generated, enough to provide Europe with a sixth of its electricity needs and to allow it to make significant cuts in its carbon emissions. At the same time, the stations would be used as desalination plants to provide desert countries with desperately needed supplies of fresh water.” The technique used will be the CSP or “concentrating solar power” model which has a hollow water-filled metal tower surrounded by mirrors which focus the sun’s rays on it. Water is turned to steam and powers turbines which make electricity.

This is a similar but slightly different approach to the one being taken by Ausra Inc, which is set to begin construction on giant solar thermal power plants in the US. With backing from venture capitalists, Ray Lane of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA ), Pacific Gas and Electric and Florida Light and Power. The utilities have committed to solar plants that will produce 1,000MW within the decade. Starting with a 10MW Florida plant, the group’s plan is to go to 300MW for FLP. For the Pacific Group, Ausra will start with a 175MW plant. The reason the investors and utilities are willing to invest in this project is because of the technology that Ausra believes will take the cost down below ten cents per KW.

Khosla is so impressed that he predicts that the technology, which uses flat mirrors instead of parabolic mirrors, will revolutionize renewable energy both in the US and developing countries like China and India. Johh O’Donnell, the man responsible for bringing the investors together became interested in the design while reading a paper by University of Sydney professor David Mills. Unlike the nine power stations built in the 1980’s by Israeli company Luz Corp, Mill’s plan uses flat not parabolic mirrors. The Israeli power plants in the Mojave Desert are still generating 354 MW of electricity but costs never fell below 16 cents a KW, which didn’t impress investors. Mill’s design uses the heat of the sun, directly, to make steam from the water instead of oil as Luz did. Mill’s mirrors are cheaper to build and rugged enough to withstand hurricane force winds, according to an article in Business Week, in October of 2007.

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