When it comes to solar companies, First Solar is the Google of renewable energy. The Tempe, Ariz.-based solar cell maker backed by the Wal-Mart (WMT)’s Walton family has seen its stock skyrocket over the past year, hitting a high of $317 on May 14. (It was trading at $275 Friday.) Now First Solar, which makes “thin film” solar modules, is getting into the utility business, winning approval Thursday from California regulators to build the state’s first thin-film photovoltaic solar power plant. The 7.5 megawatt project – expandable to 21 megawatts – will sell electricity to Southern California Edison (EIX) under a 20-year contract.
While First Solar (FSLR) supplies solar modules to power plant builders in Europe, this is apparently the first time it has acted as a utility-scale solar developer itself. First Solar tends to keep quiet about its projects and did not return a request for comment. But a troll through the public records reveals some details of what is called the FSE Blythe project. The solar farm will be built in the Mojave Desert town of Blythe by a First Solar subsidiary, First Solar Electric. The company paid $350,000 in January for 120 acres of agricultural land in Blythe, providing a tidy profit for the seller, which had purchased the property for $60,000 in June 1999.
Approval of the contract by the California Public Utilities Commission Thursday came on the same day that SunPower (SPWR) announced a deal to build two photovoltaic power plants – a 25-megawatt one and a 10-megawatt version – in Florida for utility Florida Power & Light (FPL). PV plants are essentially supersized versions of rooftop solar panel systems found on homes and businesses. Thin-film solar prints solar cells on flexible material or glass and typically uses little or no expensive (and in short supply) polysilicon, the key material of conventional solar cells.
Most large-scale solar power plants being developed in the United States use solar thermal technology that relies on huge arrays of mirrors to heat liquids to create steam that drives electricity-generating turbines. In fact, there is a solar land rush underway in the desert Southwest as solar developers, investment banks like Goldman Sachs (GS), utilities and speculators of every stripe scramble to lock up hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land for solar power plants. (See Green Wombat’s feature story on the solar land rush in the July 21 issue of Fortune.)
PV power plants, on the other hand, have not been cost-competitive with solar thermal and have been most popular in countries like Germany, Spain and Portugal, where generous subsidies guarantee solar developers a high rate for the electricity they produce. The situation in the U.S. seems to be changing, though, judging by the deals utilties are striking with companies like First Solar and SunPower. Meanwhile, thin-film startup OptiSolar is moving to build a gigantic 550-megawatt thin-film solar power plant on California’s central coast but has yet to sign a power purchase agreement with a utility.
Green Wombat 
PV not cost competitive? The Solar/Thermal plant at Eldorado, south of Las Vegas cost about $250M to build and makes 70MW at best; a construction cost of about $3.60/watt. They go offline and invert the mirrors if the wind blows to avoid mirror surface damage. They have a 5MW parasite load when offline to facillitate rapid restart. They use cooling water for their steam turbine/generator. SCE’s price for their 250MW “Solar Roof” project is about $3.60/watt, but with NO O&M COSTS, parasite offline costs or water requirement. And with PV at roughly twice the power density of S/T, the 1/2 square mile devoted to the Eldorado project could be making 150 MW. PV allows the generation to be sited at the load. This reduces and can even eliminate infrastructure costs. Mechanically produced electricity from renewable sources needs to be relegated to wind and hydro.
There is little purpose served anymore by “Central Power Stations” when considering PV solar. Current “Plug and Play” grid-tied PV inverters are user friendly and readily available. Using rooftop mounted PV panels puts the generation at the load, automatically reducing system demand and infrastructure loading. There are literally hundreds of square miles of suitable and accessible rooftops in the Southwest, more than enough to make a significant difference in peak system power demand.
Mechanically derived solar power primarily serves to assure that a high O&M cost exists that can be marked up 10% and passed on to the Ratepayer. Steam engined trains were replaced in the ’50’s by diesel/electrics; that’s analagous to where PV is now. PV is now about the same initial price as the mechanical energy conversion systems, but with no built-in operation or maintenance costs, or demand for cooling water.
Renewables suffer from intermittent production and need a stable energy storage method. One possible “Renewable Energy Storage” system is to use renewable power to catalytically crack water and meter the H2 into the nationwide natural gas pipline system. Information I’ve seen suggests that natural gas can accept up to 15% by volume of H2 with no requirement for equipment modification by the end users. Catalytic water cracking systems currently exist that are 85%-95% efficient, and the “spare” O2 is always a sellable byproduct.
There are lots of achievable energy solutions applicable to the Public good but apparently little Political will to enact them.
Why not float PV modules out in the oceans??? We can erect floating cities as well… Of course, we will have floating sewage treatment facilities to go along with them.. This will make excellent training grounds for space exploration… We need to cover as much water with anything to shield from the sun and reduce water evaporation into the atmopshere . Water vapor is a greenhouse gas to go with carbon dioxide, you know that, dont ya/
Interesting thought Gumby. It could work if we could actually power a city using only solar panels while also keeping it afloat.
However, your idea of ‘shielding’ water from the sun is, well, ignorant. Without water evaporating from oceans and transfered polewards, heat in theory would build up to infinity at equtorial regions. Water vapor is the reason why Earth isn’t desolate and lifeless; it keeps our planet’s temperature habitable. I think/know we’re better off reducing other GHGs. Regardless, even if we manage to ‘shield’ the water from the sun, it will just evaporate from an uncovered surface of the ocean somewhere else.
If they are backed by Walmart how can they be the Google of anything other than below average wages and crappy health care
Well Mitch I know you have made the same statements about the Southern Nevada CSP plant before. Last time you said it was an acquaintance of yours who worked there. You really need to call him back to get some of your facts straight or I would have to assume you are intentionally being less than honest. Now for the second time the plant DOES NOT HAVE a 5 MW offline load. 5 MW’s would be about what it would use during online operation but a plant is rated on net output (amount it actually sells to the utility) The mirrors do need to be cleaned to keep efficiency up but in any commercial PV plant the cells are cleaned also. The mirrors are occasionally turned down to protect from wind but this is a very rare occurrence and only usually done on the outside rows. The Nevada plant is not an especially new design, it is small by most new designs and is far from the cheapest of the new designs.
Now lets talk about your beloved PV. First off I feel that PV cells will someday become important. I feel they work well for localized generation but for commercial solar they are far behind. You are comparing CSP with PV cells but are leaving out a few facts. First off your PV cells are flat plate. That is the only time they have to make rated capacity is when the sun is directly overhead. This only happens once a day and is seasonally dependent also. Maybe you need to look at PV solar output and sun angle. They do have tracking PV but this would drastically drive up prices, land coverage and maintenance. PV does not have a way to store energy and is susceptible to drastic load swings. Now a few widely scattered PV cells will not do much but 500 MW’s worth in one place could cause some problems with your grid or at the very least cause the utility to have to purchase some very expensive power from outside sources.
I am sick and tired of all the whining about Wal Mart. If the employees don’t like it they can work somewhere else. Wal Mart has lowered their food prices in a time where the prices have skyrocketed. If other companies had the good management of wal mart they would do as well as wal mart. wal mart is bringing capitalism to china. Low priced products is good for those of us in the middle classes, and it also forces other businesses to lower their prices.
I just can’t see solar being used for anything other than a supplemental supply of electricty and hot water to individual homes. Oh and when everybody buys these hybrids in the next few years what will be the source of electricity to recharge their batteries. The utilities are not out mass producing power plants for this glut of electrical demand. We can develop a mass transits system that uses fuel from renewable sources in large metropolitan areas. We need people who know what they are doing, not people reacting irrationally, because they don’t have a clue. We need to come up with a rational energy policy. If you think our Congress is best suited to do this, you are an idiot. I haven’t heard much on capturing methane gas from land fills to operate gas turbines. Also GE is building a power plant in China that captures the heat used in steel producion. Fluor is working in Germany on capturing and storing CO2 emissions. This country has become a disgrace, the few control the masses, and they are generally misinformed or have an agenda. The foul ups of the last 30 years cannot be fixed overnight.