The Super Solar Grid  

I was pleasantly surprised today to see that American Superconductor is looking at the opportunity to expand the US power grid provided by large scale solar thermal power.

In recent months, companies including Spain's Abengoa SA have announced plans to build utility-scale solar thermal plants in the U.S. West that will ultimately be able to power hundreds of thousands of homes.

American Superconductor, which makes power cables, surge protectors and other products to connect wind farms to the electrical grid, is analyzing several of those projects to consider how it can help transmit power from remote desert areas to utility customers in the Western United States.

"We've been looking at (solar thermal) very carefully," Yurek said in an interview. "Until 6 or 9 months ago, we weren't really hearing much about solar thermal and all of a sudden you are starting to see these requests for bids come out from FPL Group Inc and PG&E Corp, who want to put in hundreds of megawatts of solar."

Solar thermal power plants use the sun's heat to run steam turbines that produce electricity and are mostly located in sun-drenched states such as California and Arizona. Both of those states are requiring a percentage of their future power use to come from renewable sources.

For American Superconductor, which generated 65 percent of its 2007 sales from the wind industry, the move into connecting solar thermal power plants to the grid is a natural one.