First Solar Stock Declines
March 22, 2010 - Overcapacity of photovoltaic panels from China may be causing concern for Arizona-based First Solar, which is planning multiple utility-scale PV projects on public and private lands in the desert.
Investors retreat amid fears that a solar panel oversupply driven by China and public policy uncertainties in the West are still slicing profit margins too thin. China's manufacturers are churning out solar panels despite a potential slowdown in European markets where countries are trimming subsidies that support demand. But falling solar panel costs have helped increase consumer demand.
Stocks on the WilderHill Clean Energy Index, listed as ECO by the New York Stock Exchange, have dropped 10 percent this year. The index includes renewable energy and clean-energy technology stocks, with a significant solar component.
"There is brutal competition," Molchanov said. "With China emerging as a dominant player in solar manufacturing, it is difficult for Western players."
First Solar has also seen its stock decline since December as wary investors express concern about whether sales will net $2.9 billion in 2010 as projected by CEO Robert Gillette. First Solar is competing with China's huge Suntech Power Holdings. Analysts and investors soured after the company issued a guidance late Thursday predicting it would miss its earnings targets in 2010. SunPower's growth is declining as a flurry of recent acquisitions and partnerships has exploded the company's fixed costs.
WWW.EENEWS.NET/CLIMATEWIRE/2010/03/22
Solar Projects
January 28, 2010 - Chuckwalla Valley is getting filled with large solar proposals (see Bureau of Land Management Palm Springs South Coast Feild Office):
First Solar Desert Sunlight - thin-film cadmium telluride project surrounding private property and occupying tortoise habitat. Next to Desert Center and Joshua Tree National Park.
Solar Millennium Palen - 10 miles east of Desert Center. Parabolic trough solar thermal project, 484 MW on 3,800 acres. (California Energy Commission website >>here)
Solar Millennium Blythe - Parabolic trough solar thermal project, 8 miles west of Blythe, California. 968 MW on 6,300 acres. (California Energy Commission website >>here)
NextEra Ford Dry Lake Project (Genesis Solar Project) - 250 MW parabolic trough solar thermal project, wet-cooled. (California Energy Commission website >>here)
How to Store Energy the Wrong Way
^Eagle Mountain (Photo by Larry and Donna Charpied).
January 11, 2010 - The Department of Energy and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced a proposal for the closed Eagle Mountain mine to be used as a giant "water battery" apparently for the planned solar farms that are also proposed for Chuckwalla Valley.
Eagle Crest Energy Company proposed a hydroelectric application called the Eagle Mountain Pumped Storage Project.
It would be located in two depleted mining pits in the Eagle Mountain Mine in Riverside County, California, near the Town of Desert Center, California, and would occupy Bureau of Land Management and private lands owned by Kaiser Eagle Mountain, LLC.
The project would consist of a 191-acre upper reservoir impounded by two diversion dams with a total storage capacity of 20,000 acre-feet; and a 163-acre lower reservoir with a total storagecapacity of 21,900 acre-feet. A spillway channel about 4,000 feet long and various complex tunnels and underground pump turbines would transfer up to 1,300 megawatts of electricity as water is pumped into the upper resevoir and allowed to flow down. The idea apparently would be to store the electricity produced by the numerous photovoltaic and/or solar thermal projects proposed nearby, so that it could be slowly released during hours when the sun does not shine.
A new 13.5-mile-long, 500-kilovolt transmission line would have to be built to connecting to a new substation. Many miles of permanent construction and access roads; staging, storage, and administration areas near the switchyard; and other facilites would also be built. The average annual generation is estimated to be 22.2 gigawatt-hours.
A copy of the application is available for review at the Commission in the Public Reference Room or may be viewed on the Commission's Web site at http://www.ferc.gov using the eLibrary' link. Enter the docket number excluding the last three digits in the
docket number field to access the document. [Project No. 13123-002]
This is the same mine that was slated to be the largest trash dump for Los Angeles, a project that was recently turned down by the courts. But developers are always trying to find new ways to destroy this mountain partly in Joshua Tree National Park.
We ask, where are they going to get all this water in the desert?
Solar Contractor Fired for Trespassing
December 18, 2009 - Greg Miller, Renewable Energy Coordinator for California Bureau of Land Management told us (personal communication) that the contractor for First Solar who was trespassing on private land during surveys, leving survey markers on public land (as trash), and driving off roads into Desert tortoise habitat. First Solar wants to build a massive thin-film photovoltaic panel field in Chuckwalla Valley. (See story of the trespassing >>here)
Here It Comes - Industrialization of the Desert
Ask BLM to extend the comment period on these projects!
November 27, 2009 -
We are quite concerned with the rush of fast-tracked solar energy projects in Chuckwalla Valley that will potentially ruin this Colorado Desert area. Bureau of Land Management is announcing new projects and public scoping comment periods, but not yet releasing Plans of Development. This prevents the public from reviewing the impacts to the southern edge of Joshua Tree National Park, the vast Ocotillo and wildflower flats, forested Ironwood washes, Desert tortoises, and Burro deer. Fast-tracking allows corporations to gain federal grants and subsidies if they start building by December 2010, yet short-changes the public the chance to have a say about how their lands are managed.
Here are the projects that have gained momentum recently:
NextEra Ford Dry Lake Solar Power Plant/Genesis Solar Energy Project
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a
Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement/Staff Assessment for a 1,800-acre parabolic trough solar thermal development at Ford Dry Lake near Desert Center in Riverside County, California.
The project is located about 25 miles west of the city of
Blythe, California, on BLM-managed lands. The project area is south of the Palen/McCoy Wilderness Area and north of Ford Dry Lake and Interstate 10.
NextEra Energy Resources, LLC, a subsidiary of Florida-based FLP Group, announced that it has entered into acontract to sell 250-megawatts of solar thermal power from the proposed to Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). It would be comprised of two 125-megawatt units. The project would also include a substation, administration facilities, operations and maintenance facilities, evaporation ponds, surface storm water control facilities, and temporary construction lay-down areas.
Of great concern in this arid desert valley, NextEra is proposing to use a wet cooling tower for power plant cooling. This is an intensive use of groundwater and we feel it is unsustainable. Water for cooling tower makeup, process water makeup, and other industrial uses such as mirror washing would be supplied from on-site groundwater wells. Project cooling waste water would be piped to lined, on-site evaporation ponds.
NextEra Energy Resources has nearly 20 years of experience operating similar technology at its SEGS solar facilities in the Mojave Desert.
An amendment to the California Desert Conservation Area (CDCA) Plan would have to be undertaken to allow solar development here, as with most solar projects in the California desert.
If approved, project construction would begin in late 2010.
COMMENTS on issues may be submitted in writing until December 23, 2009. Comments may be submitted at:
Web site: http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/palmsprings.html
or http://energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/genesis_solar/index.html.
E-mail: CAPSSolarNextEraFPL@blm.gov or mmonasmi@energy.state.ca.us.
Fax: (760) 251-4899.
Mail: Mike Monasmith, Project Manager Siting, Transmission and Environmental Protection Division, CEC, 1516 Ninth Street, MS-15, Sacramento, California 95814 or Allison Shaffer,
Project Manager, Palm Springs-South Coast Field Office, BLM, 1201 Bird Center Drive, Palm Springs, California 92262.
[Federal Register: November 23, 2009 (Volume 74, Number 224), Page 61167-61168, wais.access.gpo.gov]
^Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa) and Beavertail cactus (Opuntia basilaris) in spring.
First Solar Desert Sunlight Power Project
This is a BLM California Fast-Track project that has started through environmental review.
First Solar was caught trespassing on private land recently, as well as driving over tortoise habitat on public land near Desert Center >>here.
It is a proposed project for a thin film technology, photovoltaic array, electrical generating facility capable of generating a maximum of 550 MW of renewable power.
The proposed project site is located on approximately 9,510 acres of federal land managed by the BLM in Riverside County, California, approximately 5.7 miles north of the community of Desert Center. The proposed site is 7 miles north of the I-10 transmission corridor.
<First Solar built this 10 MW photovoltaic array after scraping creosote desert in Eldorado Valley near Boulder City, Nevada. It is now owned by Sempra. See >>more.
Pending approval by state regulators, construction will begin on Desert Sunlight in 2012. Southern California Edison would cooperate in the project. The Tempe, Arizona, company would use its own cadmium-telluride panels. The company began to pursue project development activities in earnest earlier this year when it purchased the unfinished projects from OptiSolar. OptiSolar, based in Hayward, California, had trouble raising enough money to continue developing the projects while also manufacturing its own solar panels.
First Solar, whose largest market is Germany, is using these projects to drive demand for its solar panels in North America. It already has built a 10-megawatt project in Nevada for Sempra Generation (see photo), which is selling the electricity from that project to PG&E. For its deals with Edison, First Solar would build the solar power plants and then sell most or all of its equity stakes in them to investors or power producers by the time it completes the projects.
See:
http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/cdd/alternative_energy/fast-trackfastfacts.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE57H3OH20090818
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/first-solar-to-build-550mw-for-socal-edison/
^Ghost flower (Mohavea confertiflora).
Devers Palo Verde2 Transmission Line
To carry all this potential future renewable energy from the remote deserts to Los Angeles and other southern California cities, new transmission lines must be built. The idea was to link this line to Palo Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Arizona, although that state has not readily agreed to being the energy sprawl backyard to California's unsustainable growth.
Submitted in 2005, Southern California Edison's (SCE) Devers Palo Verde2 Transmission Line was approved on November 20, 2009 by the California Public Utilities Commission.
The DPV2 Project as proposed by SCE includes a new 230-mile 500 kV line from the Harquahala Substation (in Arizona, near the Palo Verde nuclear power plant) to SCE's Devers Substation (in North Palm Springs, California). The 500 kV portion would follow the existing SCE 500 kV transmission line, Devers–Palo Verde No. 1 (DPV1).
The California portion of the project currently is expected to be placed in service in 2013, subject to licensing and regulatory approvals.
The California Public Utilities Commission approved the entire proposed project, but in June 2007 the Arizona Corporation Commission denied the Arizona portion of the project. The Arizona regulators dismissed the project as allowing California to plug a “230-mile extension cord” into its generation supply, something they found untenable at a time when Arizona's own population was growing rapidly.
The DPV2 Project also includes upgrades to an additional 50 miles of 230 kV transmission lines west of the Devers Substation. Forty miles of 230 kV transmission line from Devers Substation to San Bernardino Junction at the western end of San Timoteo Canyon would be reconfigured and two separate 230 kV corridors, from San Bernardino Junction to SCE's Mountain View Substation and from San Bernardino Junction to SCE's Vista Substation would be reconductored.
The Final Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement (Final EIR/EIS) was issued on October 24, 2006. Over 475 pages of comments on the Draft EIR/EIS were submitted to the BLM and the CPUC, including transcripts from the July 2006 Public Participation Hearings.
The 1200 MW line has an estimated cost approximately of $600 million.
There has been talk of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) stepping in and bypassing stubborn state regulators in favor of transmission lines with "national interest."
The Arizona portion of the line would cut right through the northern part of Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, an area of bighorn sheep herds and native California fan palm groves in Yuma County of western Arizona, southeast of Blythe, California.
<Colorful male Chuckwalla (Sauromalus obesus) in the Chocolate Mountains area, Riverside County, California, next to Chuckwalla Valley.
See these websites for more on the DPV2 transmission line:
http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/Environment/info/aspen/dpv2/dpv2.htm
http://www.energylegalblog.com/archives/2007/06/13/1422
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