[NYTr] Companies squeezing power from sun, deserts in Southern California

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San Francisco  Chronicle - Dec 2, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/02/MN4PTKKDH.DTL

Companies squeezing power from sun, deserts in Southern California

by David R. Baker
Chronicle Staff Writer

Westmorland, Imperial County--Vincent Signorotti's power plant sits on
the edge of the Salton Sea, surrounded by irrigated cropland in the
middle of a scorched desert.

Beyond the lake, beyond the patch of green fields, the desert seems
empty. But it holds all the energy Signorotti's plant will ever need
-energy that could play a key role in California's fight against global
warming.

The plant runs on hot water, pumped from deep underground and flashed
into steam to turn turbines. With 10 generators near the lakeshore, the
facility produces enough electricity for 255,000 homes, and the company
that owns it wants to expand. Other companies are drilling nearby,
hoping to build their own geothermal plants.

"We're very lucky," said Signorotti, a vice president with CalEnergy
Operating Corp., as he considered all the energy beneath his feet.
"This is really the crown jewel of undeveloped renewable resources."

A renewable-energy boom is under way in the Southern California desert.
The region's open, empty spaces have room for big projects - such as
vast solar energy farms - that can generate energy on a grand scale
while producing few, if any, greenhouse gases. Dozens of new solar and
geothermal generating stations have been proposed, from Lancaster to
the Arizona and Mexico borders. They won't be cheap to build, possibly
raising the costs Californians pay for power. But with the state's
utilities scrambling to find more renewable energy, the projects are
moving forward.

Few places in the country have better potential. Low-level volcanic
activity near the Salton Sea - a large, salty lake in Imperial County -
can feed geothermal plants running 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
And with its cloudless skies and bone-dry air, the desert has ideal
conditions for solar plants.

"You're creating all this power without harming the environment," said
Avi Brenmiller with Solel Solar Systems, which plans to build a giant
solar facility in the Mojave with backing from Pacific Gas and Electric
Co. "This can be like the next oil supply for California."

The desert energy boom won't end California's reliance on fossil fuel
power plants. But the amount of electricity involved is substantial.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which controls immense swaths of
the desert, has received land-use requests for 34 solar plants, each of
them capable of generating as much electricity as a traditional power
plant burning natural gas. It's unlikely that all will get built, but
if they were, they would generate enough power to light 18 million
homes.

California utilities have already announced their financial support for
a few of the projects. State law now forces the utilities to increase
the amount of renewable power they use. The utilities must ensure that
20 percent of the power they sell by the end of 2010 comes from
renewable resources. As a result, they are willing to fund big,
expensive projects that investors in many states probably wouldn't
touch.

The power does come at a price.

Electricity from renewable resources often costs more than power
generated by fossil fuels. When considered over the lifespan of the
facilities, the cost of generating electricity with a big solar
installation is nearly three times the cost of using a natural gas
plant, according to the California Energy Commission. Geothermal
energy, in contrast, costs a little less than power from natural gas
plants, over time.

Californians could see their electricity bills increase as utilities
back large renewable projects.

"Some of them are quite expensive," said Peter Darbee, PG&E's chief
executive officer.

He added, however, that as more renewable facilities are built, the
cost of the solar reflectors or wind turbines they use should come
down. That could keep the price consumers pay from soaring.

"Manufacturers are gearing up to meet this worldwide demand, and their
volumes are increasing," Darbee said. "So that (increase) will be, in
part, offset."

The big facilities planned for the desert also pose environmental
issues.

Solar installations, for example, can blanket hundreds of acres,
rendering the land useless for native plants and animals. And pitched
battles have been fought over proposed transmission lines that would
bring electricity from the desert to energy-hungry cities on the coast.

But some environmentalists see little choice. If California hopes to
meet its goal of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that come from
fossil fuel power plants, it will need more than rooftop solar panels.

"We need renewables at this scale, urgently," said Ralph Cavanagh,
director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's energy program.

By his calculation, the same area occupied by Edwards Air Force Base
near Lancaster (Los Angeles County) could generate roughly 17 percent
of the state's electricity supply if used for solar farms. "They're a
very good idea for California," Cavanagh said. "They're also a really
good idea for the world. This is one of the scalable solutions that can
make a big difference."

The Southern California desert already has a history in renewable
energy.

Giant windmills fill the San Gorgonio Pass just west of Palm Springs,
immense white blades wheeling slowly over the moonscape along
Interstate 10. To the north and west, on the other side of the San
Bernardino and San Gabriel mountains, large solar farms first appeared
in the 1980s.

Not all the area's renewable-energy efforts have been successful.
Several solar projects were abandoned in 1992 when the company behind
them went bankrupt. Years of low energy prices dried up funding.

But some early efforts worked, and still do.

Row upon row of curved glass mirrors fill a flat, treeless plain in
northern San Bernardino County. As the sun arcs overhead, the mirrors
follow, keeping the light focused on long tubes running down each row.
A synthetic fluid flowing through the tubes absorbs heat from the
concentrated sunlight, the liquid's temperature rising to 730 degrees.
That heat is then used to turn water to steam, which powers a turbine
and generates electricity.

The facility has been here since 1986. Along with a companion solar
farm several miles to the east, it produces about 310 megawatts of
power, with each megawatt capable of lighting about 750 homes. A
high-voltage transmission line marches south from the plant, carrying
the power to the booming San Bernardino Valley.

"The whole reason we're here is the sunshine," said Harvey Stephens,
the plant's production manager for FPL Energy. "We farm the sky as the
sun goes by every day."

The plant - called Solar Energy Generating System or "Segs" - sits
nearly 2,500 feet above sea level, with mountains shielding it from
coastal fog and urban smog. Cloudy days are rare and rain is scarce.
Even in winter months, the sunlight stays steady and strong.

That's a magnet for solar developers. America's southwestern desert,
stretching from California to Texas, receives more solar radiation per
square foot on average than any other part of the country, according to
federal estimates. And while the population in California's Mojave
Desert is growing, the area still has the vast stretches of empty land
that developers need.

"At the end of the day, if you want clean power, you have to put those
plants someplace," said Solel's Brenmiller. "And this is an ideal
place."

The California government, eager to boost renewable energy, has so far
been receptive to the idea, solar developers say.

"The state government wants all the solar it can get," said Ryan
O'Keefe, FPL Energy's executive director of development. The company is
upgrading its equipment at Segs with new fluid-filled tubes and wants
to build more solar thermal projects in California, possibly two or
three generating "several hundred" megawatts.

"Nobody wants to be seen as the guy holding this stuff up," he said.

While solar developers scout locations in the high desert, geothermal
companies study the low desert near the Salton Sea.

They are drawn by the region's geology. The San Andreas Fault fractures
into a jigsaw of subterranean cracks beneath the sea's southern end,
allowing the earth's heat to seep up and push underground water
temperatures past 550 degrees. Small mud volcanoes east of the sea spit
gray ooze onto the parched land and hiss with the sound of escaping gas.

Geothermal plants have been selling electricity here since the 1980s,
producing a total of more than 500 megawatts. But just as with solar
energy, interest in the technology ebbed when energy was cheap.

Now, companies are scouring the barren landscape for places where they
can drill wells and build plants. It's a pursuit much like prospecting
for oil, just with a different underground resource in mind.

About 5 miles from the sea's western shore, a towering drill rig bores
into the dry, powdery earth. Three flags wave from the rigging -
California's, the United States' and Iceland's.

Iceland America Energy plans to build a 49-megawatt power plant here in
the next three years. Water temperatures beneath this site aren't as
high as they are on the other side of the sea - around 350 degrees. But
that's still hot enough to generate electricity. The company has
already signed an agreement to sell the energy to PG&E. A Santa Rosa
firm, ThermaSource, handles the drilling.

It's no accident that a company with its roots in Iceland would try to
develop geothermal power. The volcanic island generates roughly 19
percent of its electricity from geothermal plants and uses the earth's
energy to heat 90 percent of its homes, according to the Icelandic
National Energy Authority.

"We're very much aware of the benefits of geothermal, and the
possibilities," said Magnus Johannesson, Iceland America's chief
executive officer. "That is not yet the case in America, and we need to
change that."

The company, based in Los Angeles, formed in 2004, and its shareholders
include several Icelandic energy companies. Although the company looked
elsewhere, it decided to start its first project here in the Imperial
Valley.

"California has a lot of potential, high-temperature potential,"
Johannesson said.

ThermaSource, meanwhile, has seen demand for its services jump. The
company, which has worked for years in the Geysers geothermal field
north of Calistoga, has six drill rigs operating in California and
Nevada. Two years ago, the company had three employees. Now it has 160,
said founder Louis Capuano Jr.

"The business community is into geothermal big-time right now," he
said. "We've got foreigners coming into the U.S. to develop this
resource, because it's here. There's a lot of people taking a look."

The new interest in mining power from the desert does face obstacles.

They include transmission. Many people in the energy business, and in
government, say the high-power transmission lines currently strung
across the landscape can't carry much more energy. Yet several
proposals for new power lines have run into determined resistance.

Sempra Energy, which owns the San Diego Gas & Electric utility, wants a
new high-voltage line to ship power from the Imperial Valley. But the
company's preferred route for the Sunrise Powerlink runs right through
Anza Borrego Desert State Park, a wild expanse of dry mountains
separating the desert from the coast.

Opponents say the line is unnecessary. They want to add solar panels to
new homes and commercial buildings in the San Diego area and improve
energy efficiency, lessening the need for energy generated elsewhere.

In addition, they say the existing transmission network should be able
to handle more electricity in the future, after some of the
power-purchase contracts signed by the state during the 2000-2001
energy crisis expire in 2011. Upgrading the existing high-voltage line
between San Diego and the Imperial Valley, as well as other parts of
the network, makes more sense than building from scratch.

"At this moment, there's a lot of capacity tied up on that line, but
that evaporates in 2011," said Bill Powers, an energy industry engineer
who issued a report proposing alternatives to Sunrise Powerlink.

Signorotti said that while he doesn't prefer any particular route, the
area will need new transmission lines if the state hopes to wring as
much energy as possible from the Imperial Valley geothermal fields. And
the state will need that energy to meet its renewable-power goals. His
company estimates that its small corner of the Salton Sea shore could
generate at least an additional 900 megawatts, perhaps as much as 2,330.

"To meet the renewable ... standard, it's going to be absolutely
critical that the Salton Sea resource be developed," Signorotti said.
"I don't see any way around it."