A coal-fired electrical plant in Tucson, Ariz., is going green — or at least “greener” — partnering with a French, state-owned nuclear company to install a solar add-on that will generate enough clean electricity to power 600 homes using high-pressure, superheated steam warmed by a series of mirrors.
The new solar project is expected to begin construction in Spring 2012 and to be up and running at the current H. Wilson Sundt Generating Station in Tucson by 2013, according to a news release from plant operator Tucson Electric Power and AREVA, the French energy company behind the solar technology.
“Solar booster projects like this are gaining momentum in the United States and around the world as a way to leverage existing power infrastructure to provide needed energy with no new emissions,” said Bill Gallo, CEO of AREVA Solar, in the joint news release on Tuesday.
Indeed, in March 2011, Florida Power & Light announced the construction of the “first hybrid solar power plant in the world,” as Forbes noted.
But the new AREVA project is notable for its use of a proprietary technology the company calls Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) technology. That technology is a variant of a broader type of innovative solar energy generation called concentrated solar power (CSP) or “solar thermal,” which uses fields of angled, sun-tracking mirrors to focus light on a turbine consisting of liquid-filled tubes, turning the liquid into steam, which is then used to generate electricity.
As AREVA and TEP noted in their release on Tuesday: “In addition to augmenting coal-fired power plants, AREVA’s solar steam generators can also easily integrate with natural gas-fired combined-cycle power plants and can be used in standalone solar thermal and hybrid facilities, as well as industrial process steam applications.”
AREVA has a wealth of experience with the solar steam technology. Or rather, it does now, having acquired American solar startup Ausra, which developed the CLFR technology, back in February 2010 — almost two years to the date of the announcement of the Arizona project.
Ausra, at the time, had shifted its business to become an equipment provider, away from its bolder claims of being able to provide “all of the electrical power the U.S. would need from a hypothetical plot of desert real estate measuring 92 miles by 92 miles,” as Greentech Media reported.
The pivot was due to the fact that Ausra, a Mountain View, Calif.-based company backed by Silicon Valley investors, failed to win coveted contracts from major California utilities including PG&E and Southern California Edison. Greentech Media‘s Michael Kanellos theorized that was because the utilities had doubts about Ausra’s ability to deliver on its bold claims.
Still, that didn’t stop Ausra from building an award-winning solar thermal energy facility in Bakersfield, Calif., in 2008 and landing other contracts in Australia.
Indeed, AREVA, the world’s leading nuclear energy company, of which 79 percent is owned by the French government, still proudly touts the CLFR technology it purchased along with Ausra “as the most cost-effective and land-efficient Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technology,” adding: “By 2020, experts predict the CSP market will reach an estimated installed capacity of over 20 GWe, with an average annual growth rate of 20%. AREVA Solar is poised to fill the increased need for CSP technology.”
However, questions remain. As Greentech Media pointed out when AREVA acquired Ausra back in summer 2010: “What could go wrong? In solar thermal, the only answer to that question is ‘almost everything.'” Solar thermal plants require large amounts of land, leading to environmental impact concerns, and major energy developers hadn’t expressed much interest in Ausra’s CSP technology, the trade news outlet noted at the time.
Not to mention Google itself tried its hand at CSP technology and gave up, shuttering its renewable energy program in November 2011, having discovered it to difficult to get its radical ideas for an ultra-efficient steam generator into practical, cost-effective projects. Google remains a backer of the still-under-construction Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert, which is described as the “world’s largest solar thermal facility” at 392-megawatts, enough to power 140,000 U.S. homes.
By contrast, AREVA’s new partnership with Tucson Electric is minuscule, aiming to produce just 5 megawatts during peak demand periods, enough to power 600 homes. Still, a more manageable goal — one that combines existing fossiel fuels with greener, cleaner innovative solar technology — might be the way to go. That’s what AREVA’s betting on. We’ll see how it pans out. Stay tuned.
Correction: This article originally misspelled “Ausra” as “Asura.” We regret the error. It has since been corrected in copy.
