Installation of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (Ivanpah SEGS) worth US$2.2 billion is 50% complete, according to an announcement by NRG Energy, Google, BrightSource Energy and construction partner Bechtel.
The Ivanpah solar power facility, which is said to be “the world’s largest solar thermal project”, is located on approximately 3,500 acres of federal land in California’s Mojave Desert. Construction began in October 2010 and consists of three individual power plants which will have a total output of 370MW. The power plants will utilize BrightSource Energy’s solar thermal power tower technology which uses heliostats to reflect the sun’s energy to a boiler atop a tower in order to produce high temperature and high-pressure steam. The steam is then integrated with conventional power plant components to produce “clean” energy.
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According to Rick Needham, director of Energy & Sustainability for Google, “Ivanpah will be the largest project in the world to use this potentially transformative solar technology. We hope that our support spurs further investment to deploy innovative, scalable renewable energy solutions around the world.”
To date, in the power block area, workers have erected three steel tower structures to support the boilers which extend to a height of 459 ft, welded an interconnecting pipe inside the boiler and installed power plant equipment. In the solar field, workers are installing the project’s 173,000 pylons and heliostats, which are assembled on-site at a rate of 500 each day. So far, workers have installed more than 100,000 steel pylons and nearly 50,000 heliostats.
“The scale and complexity of the Ivanpah project presented first-of-a-kind construction challenges that required innovative thinking and execution at every level,” said Jim Ivany, president of Bechtel’s Renewable Power business. “We created lean approaches to multiple phases of the project, including heliostat assembly installation and construction of the project’s steel towers, each topped with 2,200-ton solar receiver steam generators. The processes we developed enabled the team to successfully advance the project to support electricity generation in 2013.”
The project has been particularly good for the US economy, having created 2,100 on-site jobs for construction workers and project support staff. Bechtel signed a project labor agreement with the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California (SBCTC) and the Building & Construction Trades Council of San Bernardino and Riverside counties to ensure that California‘s local workforce benefits from the project.
Furthermore, the majority of the project’s supply chain is being sourced domestically across 17 US states, driving investments throughout the country and creating additional jobs in other areas that have been adversely affected by the economic downturn.
Construction is currently on-track to be complete in 2013. When finished, BrightSource Energy claims that the facility will nearly double the amount of solar thermal electricity produced in the US.
Power generated from the plants will be sold under separate contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE). The first unit will begin supplying power to PG&E in mid 2013, with units two and three delivering power to Southern California and PG&E respectively by late 2013.
Ivanpah will help PG&E and SCE meet the state of California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) requirements; a legislation which requires each investor-owned utility to procure 33% of its energy portfolio from renewable resources by 2020.
