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Nevada 110-MW Solar Power Plant Gets OK
SolarReserve’s planned 110-MW concentrating solar thermal power plant recently receive...
Nevada 110-MW Solar Power Plant Gets OK
SolarReserve’s planned 110-MW concentrating solar thermal power plant recently received the go-ahead from the U.S. Dept. of the Interior. The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project will be situated on 1,776 acres of federal land 13 miles northwest of Tonopah in the Nevada desert. The project will be the nation’s first commercial solar power plant using salt storage, enabling electrical generation for up to eight hours after dark and during cloudy days.
Crescent Dunes will break ground in mid-2011, and cost between $650 million and $750 million to complete. Construction will generate 450 direct jobs, plus 50 permanent positions upon commercial operation in early 2013. The plant expected to produce $40 million in sales and property tax revenues. Santa Monica, Calif.-based SolarReserve is currently negotiating with an unnamed engineering-procurement-construction contractor.
The facility consists of a 2-sq-mile circular field of 17,000 heliostats, or sun tracking reflective mirrors, that concentrate daylight to a 100-ft-tall receiver atop a 538-ft-high, 85-ft-dia. tapered concrete tower. Liquid salt circulates through the receiver’s heat exchangers where it reaches 1050°F. Next, molten salt is routed through a steam turbine that generates electricity before discharging into an insulated tank at 525° for storage and later reuse.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a unit of Hartford, Conn.-based United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX), developed the technology, which was successfully demonstrated during the late 1990s at the U.S. Dept of Energy-backed 10-MW Solar Two project near Barstow, Calif.
The plant additionally uses a hybrid cooling system that requires less than 600-acre-ft of water annually or about half as much as traditional wet-cooled power plant. About 9.5 miles of above ground electrical transmission lines connecting to a substation north of the plant are included in the project.
Tonopah Solar Energy LLC, a SolarReserve unit, signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with NV Energy in February 2010. The facility will produce 485,000-MW/h of electricity annually or enough for about 75,000 households, making it NV Energy’s second-largest renewable-power source. Nevada power providers must get 25% of their electricity from green sources by 2025, as per a state mandate.
