Sunrise In San Diego  

One of the large CSP projects I mentioned in my solar thermal power post was Stirling Energy Systems' proposed 900 MW project in southern California. Sign On San Diego reports this has been reduced in size to 750 MW, ironically to appease environmentalists who objected to a large grid expansion across the desert - Massive solar plan is linked to SDG&E. The project still consists of a massive 30,000 dishes.

An Arizona startup company yesterday asked government regulators for approval to build a massive solar energy power plant that proponents say is crucial to San Diego Gas & Electric's proposed Sunrise Powerlink. The project planned by Stirling Energy Systems of Phoenix calls for erecting 30,000 mirrored dishes, each 38 feet tall and 40 feet wide, in the desert near El Centro. It would convert solar energy into electricity to power 500,000 San Diego homes.

Stirling's proposal has become a crucial part of SDG&E's plans to comply with a state mandate that requires the utility to provide 20 percent of its electricity from renewable power sources by 2010. ... Stirling officials say the underlying solar technology has taken decades to refine. They say the proposed 750-megawatt solar generation facility, to be called SES Solar Two, would be the world's biggest solar energy generating system.

The company initially had proposed building a 900-megawatt solar plant on 7,650 acres of mostly federal land between Interstate 8 and state Route 80 near Plaster City, about 10 miles west of El Centro. But it reduced the scope of the project to a 750-megawatt facility on 6,500 acres to avoid potential adverse environmental effects from grading the eastern portion of the site, according to the application.

Stirling has proposed building the project in two phases, so that only the second phase would require completion of Sunrise, a 150-mile, high-voltage transmission line SDG&E proposes to build between San Diego and the Imperial Valley.

The first phase calls for erecting 12,000 “SunCatcher” solar dishes on 2,600 acres, which would generate about 300 megawatts of electricity. That power would be transmitted to San Diego along the existing Southwest transmission line that runs near I-8, Stirling said. The second phase calls for building 18,000 solar dishes that would generate 450 megawatts and would require completion of the Sunrise Powerlink.

“We can deliver the first phase to San Diego on existing power lines, but new transmission infrastructure is critical to achieving full realization of the Solar Two facility,” Bruce Osborn, Stirling's chief operating officer, said in a statement.

The company intends to find another site in the Imperial Valley suitable for 6,000 solar dishes needed to generate an additional 150 megawatts, said Bob Liden, Stirling's vice president of special projects. Under a 20-year contract signed in 2005, SDG&E agreed to buy all power produced by the 300-megawatt solar plant proposed in the first phase. Under the agreement, Stirling is to provide 600 megawatts of additional solar energy to the San Diego power grid by expanding the facility.

Stirling says it can build the first phase of the project for about $400 million, which Sunrise opponent Bill Powers has derided as “the stuff of fantasy.” A more likely estimate is $1.8 billion, said Powers, a local engineering consultant. Liden said Stirling spent roughly $250,000 apiece to develop prototypes of its SunCatcher solar dishes, but bulk raw-materials purchases and high-volume manufacturing will reduce production cost to a fraction of that.