At the end of October, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar granted final planning approval for the Blythe solar power plant in the Californian Mojave Desert. The world’s largest solar power plant is to be built there on an area of 2,800 hectares. The Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. agency that administers public lands, will then lease the rights of land use and access to Solar Millennium LLC, the American project development unit within the German Solar Millennium Group. It is the first approval granted by the U.S. Department of the Interior for a parabolic trough power plant on government land. The approximately six billion euro project is to be financed mainly by private investors.
“The Blythe Solar Power Project is a major milestone in our nation’s renewable energy economy,” Salazar explained while signing the approval. “This project shows in a real way how harnessing our own renewable resources can create good jobs here at home.” At Blythe four solar thermal power plants are to be constructed with an overall output of 1,000 megawatts. The combined solar facility will thus reach the level of output achieved by nuclear power plants. Together, the four power plants should produce sufficient electricity for more than 300,000 American households and also reduce carbon dioxide emissions by almost a million tonnes. Solar Millennium estimates that the project will create 1,000 jobs during the construction phase at the Blythe site and more than 220 permanent jobs once all four power plants begin operation. “Approval for Blythe shows the determination of the U.S. government to give higher priority to solar power plants in the future energy mix,” Josef Eichhammer, CEO of Solar Millennium LLC, emphasizes. The first 242-megawatt power station unit should come on stream in 2013.
In a parabolic trough power plant, trough-shaped mirrors focus the sun’s rays onto a tube at the focal point of the solar collector. A heat transfer fluid is heated inside the tube and produces steam in the power plant unit where it turns a turbine to generate electricity. By integrating a thermal store, the electricity can be made available when required, even at night. The same technology is to be used in Desertec, the major international project in which Solar Millennium is also involved. Power plants are to be constructed in the Sahara Desert to supply Europe with electricity.
Germany and the United States are involved in numerous joint solar energy projects. In the coming months, for example, Solar Millennium is expecting approval for three more power plant sites in Nevada and California. Whereas Germany’s installed solar energy capacities, roughly 10,000 megawatts, put it at the very top of the international solar ranking, so far the United States is in fourth place with just over 2,000 megawatts. U.S. companies are among the most important investors in the Solar Valley photovoltaic cluster in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, which has the largest concentration of solar companies worldwide.////
