Clean Energy Megaplex Can’t Get On Grid

By Ben Ray • Published June 16th, 2008 • Further Reading ShareThis

One of the largest clean energy facilities in the country is going to power San Diego–if they can figure out a way to get the power there.

California has already announced and began making substantial progress towards their goal of having 33% of all power come from clean sources by 2020, but one of their providers is lagging far behind all of the others: San Diego Gas & Electric only provides 6% of their power from renewable resources, a far cry from Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric, with 16 and 12 percent respectively. SDG&E has decided to address this problem head-on; they’ve contracted to buy the power from a solar/geothermal/wind megaplex 100 miles from the city. The problem? Getting the power from the giant desert plant to consumers, a trip that would cover 23 miles of Anza-Borrego State Park, and require 150-foot steel towers to ruin the view in one of the most scenic places in the California Republic.

Giant Clean Power Initiatives? Tell Me More!

The Anza-Borrego route was the second-worst of seven paths for the transmission lines to traverse, and was chosen despite that impact–largely because of speed of construction, and the desire that SDG&E has to rapidly catch up with their peers. The new complex could potentially power 750,000 homes, over half of the utility’s customers, upon completion, but the third party plant owners won’t go ahead with construction until SDG&E has the transmission plans secured, for obvious reasons.

Third Parties? Who? What? Why?

Of the several corporations involved in the building of the yet-unnamed plant, Phoenix-based Sterling Energy Systems has been the most ambitious: they plan to install 200,000 homes worth of solar dishes at the site, and if SDG&E can secure more transmission capacity, they’ll triple the size of their commitment, thanks to a grant from Irish holding company NTR PLC. California’s public utilities commission is planning to vote on the issue as soon as August, leaving fans of the part little time to act; despite that, they’re still actively encouraging SDG&E to ditch the plan in favor of solar panels on homes, a model being pursued by Edison: “This transmission line will cross through some of the most scenic areas of San Diego,” said David Hogan of the Center for Biological Diversity. “It would just ruin it.”

More Reading

Utility Finds Foes to Renewable Energy Power Line Plan (AP)
SDG&E Renewable Power (SDG&E)

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HiTension 2 months ago 1 point
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I'll tell you more.

The Sunrise Powerlink is proposed by Sempra Energy (an LNG importer), which claims it’s for renewable energy. However, all of the current renewable energy projects for which Sempra claims the line is needed are commercially immature or highly speculative and may never be built.

The Stirling Energy Systems (SES) solar technology hyped by you has never been commercialized and is still experimental. An April 2008 Department of Energy document indicates that the six existing SES solar generator prototypes currently operate with a mean time between failure (MTBF) of only 200 hours, whereas the DOE has said that a MTBF of over 4,000 hours is needed. A low MTBF number means the equipment breaks down frequently and is not reliable. Yet, SDG&E (a Sempra subsidiary) bet that SES could jump from six unreliable experimental prototypes to 12,000 utility-grade units by 2010. Hello! Are any of you engineers or development professionals so that you know something about how technolgoy is developed? If you were you'd know that SES's proposal is a commercial fantasy. Also, NTR did not give SES a "grant." It bought stock in the company and has claimed that it will invest $100 million in the technology. Hopefully NTR will invest this money in basic research because that's what the technolgoy needs and if the federal budget shrinks in our tanking economy, NTR shouldn't count on federal research dollars. In any case, $100 million wouldn't come anywhere close to paying for even a part of the first 12,000 dish "commitment," even assuming the technology can be made to work. If SDG&E had contracted for technology like that used by Nevada Solar One, or contracting like SCE did for cheaper in-basin rooftop solar, they might have some credibility. But, the fact that they tapped SES to justify a $1.5 billion power line indicates they are shamelessly using this technology to greenwash their proposal.

The unexploited Imperial Valley geothermal resource is mostly under the Salton Sea and inaccessible until the Sea is at least partially drained, an expensive politically complicated possibility that if it happens at all will likely take billions of dollars and decades to accomplish. Current geothermal energy output in the Valley is around 400MW, far less than the Imperial Irrigation District’s existing dual circuit 230kV 1,000 MW line built specifically to export power from these geothermal fields. Geothermal development in the Valley has been slow not because of a lack of local transmission (it’s available) or opposition (there isn’t any) but because the brine in this saline region is extremely caustic and this makes the plants too expensive to build. Hopefully, the developers will figure out how to get their costs down. Again, we should be spending money on figuring out how to bring the costs of these plants down, not on a "me too" transmission line.

The proposed wind energy zone is mostly in Mexico and is located nowhere near the proposed Powerlink, but this wind area is bisected by two existing US and Mexican high voltage transmission lines that run west to the Tijuana-San Diego region. Sempra just doesn’t want to use these lines for renewable energy.

That’s the bait. Here’s the switch:

Transmission line capacity currently exists to export about 1,500 MW of new LNG-fired power from Mexico across the border to the exact starting point of the Powerlink. Sempra says it has no plans to build new LNG power plants, but Sempra, or one of its LNG customers, could permit and built a new LNG power plant in Mexico in about the same amount of time it would take to construct the Powerlink. Or existing Mexican power plants could use the Powerlink freeing up space on other power lines and allowing more power plant construction in Arizona, a shell game permitted under current federal law. Nobody can guarantee that this line will be used only or even primarily for renewable energy because federal energy law does not currently allow this.

There are real, available renewable energy options. That's want the those opposed to the Sunrise Powerlink are fighting for. This controversy is not about newable energy versus parks. It's about choosing the best, least expensive renewable energy options -- and about local ownership and who benefits financially from renewable energy. Don't get suckered by the "renewable energy megaplex" gee whiz hype. We need to deal with reality, not hype. We need informed reporting and blogging and hardheaded activism, not mere cheerleading.

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