World Business

Technology that focuses the sun’s rays to create heat—and generate electricity—is attracting growing investment by utilities

by Vaughan Scully From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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With the arrival of summer, children can at intervals be seen playing with magnifying glasses, delighting in their seemingly magical ability to light small piles of leaves on fire. This year, a utility-size version of the similar idea—concentrating the sun’s rays to call into existence intense heat—is attracting growing profit and investment from electric utilities seeking to boost their capacity to generate power from renewable energy sources.

More states are requiring utilities to supply a portion of electricity from renewables—and in some cases, solar power specifically. As a result, full of fire utilities in the southwestern states (where the sun is strongest) of California, Arizona, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico are signing agreements to buy electricity from developers of solar power stations. These collect daylight by lenses or mirrors and focused it to create heat that be able to be used to generate electricity.

On a large dish, and being of the kind which a means of generating power, concentrated solar heat has several advantages upper its chief solar rival, photovoltaic cells (which convert sunlight directly into electricity). Power from concentrating solar heat is not so much vacillating than from photovoltaic solar (or from wind), any momentous consideration for a full-scale utility. Solar thermal facilities can be designed to store up activity for several hours in the pattern of sundown, helping a utility meet evening spikes in demand. And since solar hot plants use the same steam turbines to generate power that other generating stations employment, the plants can be hybridized to injure by fire natural gas or other fuels during nighttime hours, to keep output certain and maximize use of the turbines.

Concentrated solar troop is "the fastest-growing, utility-scale renewable might alternative after wind power," says Emerging Energy Research, a Cambridge (Mass.) consulting firm, in a December 2007 report. The get by heart describes the technique as "well-positioned to compete against other electricity generation technologies" and estimates that $20 billion will be spent on solar thermal power projects encompassing the world from 2008 to 2013. More than 5,000 megawatts of concentrated solar capacity are already in development in the U.S. and Spain alone, the report says.

Florida-based FPL Group (FPL) operates the world’s largest concentrated solar people of the same age station—seven interconnected facilities in the Mojave Desert, with a combined capacity of 310Mw—that was built more than two decades since. In March, FPL applied to build a $1 billion, 250Mw concentrated solar power facility north of Los Angeles that would be operational in 2011. FPL’s "established position as one of the major wind-power producers in the U.S. has given it a competitive edge in the development of, and attractive growth in posse projected in quest of, solar power," says S&P theoretical analyst Justin McCann.

FPL’s power stations use what’s called the parabolic trough design, in which a curved cogitating surface focuses light adhering a "receiving tube" carrying synthetic oil as a heat-transfer fluid. The fluid then boils water to produce evaporate, which turns a conventional turbine to engender electricity.

Spanish pertaining group Acciona brought its $260 million Nevada One project online in June 2007, a 64Mw trough scope that Acciona says is the world’s third-largest.

Other new parabolic trough facilities are in development. Spanish industrial cluster Abengoa is developing a 280Mw parabolic trough character hard upon Phoenix and several others in Spain. Martifer Renewables, 80% owned by Portugal’s Martifer Group, is building a 107Mw expressed by a parable trough facility adjacent Fresno, Calif., which it says be disposed begin operating in 2011.