The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, is a concentrating solar thermal power project currently under construction in the California Mojave Desert, 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Las Vegas, with a planned gross capacity of 392 megawatts (MW).
It will deploy 170,000 heliostat mirrors focusing solar energy on boilers located on centralized solar power towers. Unit 1 of the project was connected to the grid in September 2013 in an initial sync testing.
The project has been developed by BrightSource Energy and Bechtel. The Concentrating Solar Power project will cost $2.2 billion and the largest investor in the project is NRG Energy, a generating company based in Princeton, N.J., that has put in $300 million.
The project has been developed by BrightSource Energy and Bechtel. The Concentrating Solar Power project will cost $2.2 billion and the largest investor in the project is NRG Energy, a generating company based in Princeton, N.J., that has put in $300 million.
The Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) project has received a $1.375 billion loan guarantee from the United States Department of Energy. The estimated construction costs for this CSP project ($5,561.00 per KW) fall between the construction costs for coal and nuclear power plants per Synapse Energy Economics.
The Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) facility will consist of fields of heliostat mirrors focusing sunlight on receivers located on centralized solar power towers.
The receivers will generate steam to drive specially adapted steam turbines. For the first plant, the largest ever fully solar-powered steam turbine-generator set was ordered, using a 123-megawatt (165,000 hp) Siemens SST-900 dual-casing reheat turbine.
Besides steam-turbine generators Siemens will supply instrumentation and control systems. Final approval was gained in October 2010.
On October 27, 2010, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and other dignitaries gathered in the Mojave Desert to officially break ground on the project. The first phase of the Ivanpah facility is scheduled to be finished in 2013.
The Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) project has received a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. The total cost of the project is about $2.18 billion. BrightSource has contracts to sell about two-thirds of the power generated at Ivanpah to PG&E, and the rest to SCE.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System consists of three concentrating solar thermal power plants on a 1,600 ha tract of public land near the Mojave Desert and the California—Nevada border in the Southwestern United States.; this is near interstate 15 and north of Ivanpah, California.
The largest investor in the project is NRG Energy, a generating company based in Princeton, N.J., that has put in $300 million. The Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) project has also received an investment of $168 million from Google.
The Ivanpah plants would use BrightSource Energy's "Luz Power Tower 550 technology" (LPT 550). The LPT 550 solar system produces electricity the same way as traditional power plants – by creating high temperature steam to turn a turbine. BrightSource uses thousands of mirrors called heliostats to reflect sunlight onto a receiver being developed by Riley Power Inc. filled with water that sits atop a tower. When the sunlight hits the receiver, the water inside is heated and creates high temperature steam. The steam is then piped to a conventional turbine which generates electricity.
BrightSource estimates that the Ivanpah Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) facility would involve some 1,000 jobs at the peak of construction, 86 permanent jobs, and total economic benefits of $3 billion.
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