Bloomberg / BusinessWeek
BrightSource Energy Inc. won approval from U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the first large-scale solar energy project on U.S. public lands to use “power tower” technology.
BrightSource plans to start construction on the 392- megawatt Ivanpah plant in December and complete work in 2012. The project will use pole-mounted mirrors, or heliostats, to reflect the sun’s rays to boilers mounted on top of towers, heating the water inside to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (538 degrees Celsius). The resulting steam will then be piped to an electricity-generating turbine.
The approval comes two days after Salazar granted leases to Chevron Corp. and Tessera Solar for solar power projects on federal land in California totaling 754 megawatts.
Edison’s Southern California Edison utility in August won permission to buy 117 megawatts from the Ivanpah solar plant being developed in California’s Mojave Desert by closely held BrightSource. PG&E Corp. was approved to buy 275 megawatts from the project. A megawatt is enough power for about 800 typical U.S. homes, according to the Energy Information Administration.
The Ivanpah plant will be located on federal property controlled by the Bureau of Land Management in Ivanpah, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Needles, California, in San Bernardino County.
