Photovoltaic Solar Looks to be Arriving in Scale in the U.S.

By: TraderMark Thursday, August 14, 2008 7:15 PM

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“By taking control of the value chain from start to finish, by being vertically integrated and cutting out the middleman,” he says, “we can be competitive not only with other renewable energy but with conventional energy.”

Photovoltaic power plants do have certain advantages over their solar thermal cousins. They don’t need to be built in the desert, thus avoiding the land rush now underway in the Mojave. PV is a solid-state technology and with no moving parts - other than the sun tracking devices used in some plants - they make little noise and are relatively unobtrusive. Most importantly in drought-stricken California, they consume minimal water. And the modular nature of solar panels means that a power plant can start producing electricity in stages rather after the entire facility has been constructed.

But contracts are no guarantee the even a watt will be generated. The Topaz and California Valley projects must overcome a number of obstacles, not the least of which is the U.S. Congress’ failure so far to extend a crucial 30 percent investment tax credit for solar projects that expires at the end of the year. SunPower’s Blunden acknowledges the PG&E project is contingent on the tax credit being renewed. (plenty of money for corporate farmers, ethanol, and big oil - lots of strife over any credits for wind and solar - welcome to your US leadership - bought and paid for)

NYTimes article here

Two California companies said Thursday that they would each build solar power plants that were 10 times bigger than the largest now in service, creating the first true utility-scale use of a technology now mostly confined to rooftop supplements to conventional power supplies.
At peak hours, together the plants will produce as much power as a large coal plant or a small nuclear reactor. But they will run far fewer hours of the year so output will be at least a third less than that of a coal plant of the same size.
The largest current installation in the United States is at Nellis Air Force Base, in Nevada, with 14 megawatts, also built by SunPower. Spain has one completed plant at 23 megawatts. A German company, Juwi, has a 40-megawatt installation east of Leipzig. Florida Power and Light recently ordered a 25-megawatt plant.
California requires that 20 percent of the kilowatt-hours sold by investor-owned utilities come from renewable sources by 2010, a goal that some companies are struggling to meet.
SunPower’s panels are mounted at a 20-degree angle, facing south, and pivot over the course of the day, so they face the sun. OptiSolar’s panels are installed at a fixed angle. They are larger and less efficient, but much less costly, so that the cost per watt of energy is similar, company executives said.
Neither approaches the economy of fossil-fuel burning plants, said Jennifer Zerwer, a spokeswoman for Pacific Gas and Electric. But they are competitive with wind power and with power from solar thermal plants. And prices will eventually fall, she said.

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