Special to the PVT This solar energy array in Australia allows an impression of what the Amargosa site might look like. Special to the PVT Photo displays the solar panels at one of Ausra's solar power plants, a 38 megawatt facility in Australia. Advertisement

An executive with a solar energy company considering a plant in Amargosa Valley predicts the price of solar power will become comparable with gas and coal soon.

John O'Donnell, executive vice-president of Ausra Inc., based in Palo Alto, Calif., said the Amargosa Valley project would be similar to a 180-megawatt, solar-powered plant his company is building in Central California in a project with Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Ausra Inc. broke ground on a 130,000 square-foot manufacturing plant in Las Vegas in December to produce the reflectors, towers, absorber tubes and other components of their solar thermal power plants.

"We're building solar thermal power plants that use fields of mirrors to focus sunlight on the receiver towers that are about 40 feet off the ground and boil water to run a steam power plant just like a coal-fired or gas-fired power plant," O'Donnell said. "The source of heating, instead of being burning gas or burning coal, is sunlight."

The California facility under construction is on 640 acres of private land near the Carrizo National Monument between Bakersfield and San Luis Obispo, he said. It's expected to go on line in 2010.

While solar power used to cost 20 cents per kilowatt hour, quadruple the price of gas-fired power, O'Donnell said solar power has come down to about 11 cents per kilowatt hour today, while the price of gas for power plants is rising.

Valley Electric Association paid 5.8 cents per kilowatt hour last year.

O'Donnell predicted solar power costs would continue to decline to 8 cents per kilowatt hour, while coal prices rise to 9 cents.

"That's a big step forward for solar because solar has historically been twice as expensive as other options. We're looking forward to a market that grows pretty rapidly because we've got some breakthroughs in the cost of solar power. So that is coming down," O'Donnell said.

"Our CEO likes to say that today, right now, we're directly competitive with the cost of gas generation and in a few years we'll be directly competitive with the cost of coal power, which historically has been the cheapest but dirtiest power," he said. "The joker in the deck is the next two or three years it's almost a certainty at the national level we're going to have some kind of cost for emitting carbon dioxide."

O'Donnell said his project in California will use less than 20 acre feet of water per year. The availability of water could be a limiting factor for a variety of proposed alternative energy projects in Nevada, U.S. Bureau of Land Management Tonopah Field Office Manager Dave Seley said at a state public lands committee meeting last week in Beatty.

O'Donnell said Ausra is looking at several locations in Arizona and Nevada to build a project similar to the California plant.

The Amargosa Valley has good sunlight and Valley Electric Association executives have been helpful, but one of the disadvantages is the amount of dust generated in the valley, as from a zeolite plant in the southern portion, O'Donnell said. Washing the mirrors is one of the major costs of operating solar plants, he said.

Valley Electric is close to finalizing an inter-connection agreement with Ausra that will enable the company to use its transmission lines, VEA Chief Executive Officer Tom Husted told his board of directors last week.

"The biggest challenge isn't land, it's availability of electric transmission capacities. That's why Amargosa Valley is an interesting opportunity because Valley Electric is building that new 230-kilovolt transmission line up the valley that makes it possible to put the power into the grid," O'Donnell said.

Ausra acquired private land in Central California that was formerly a potato farm for their project with PG&E, O'Donnell said.

In Nevada, O'Donnell said his company is working with the BLM to obtain land. He said solar projects in Nevada may not come on line until 2010 to 2011, possibly as late as 2015 due to the BLM permitting process, but it can take that long to order the steam turbines and generators.

O'Donnell hopes federal planning agencies will speed up the permitting process for solar companies that are building power plants that don't create pollution. He said U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has been very supportive of the industry.

A 180-megawatt solar plant constructed in Amargosa Valley would generate 350 jobs during construction and 70 to 100 permanent jobs following that, he said. The goal is to build up to five solar power plants in Amargosa Valley, eventually generating up to 1,000 megawatts.

A U.S. Bureau of Land Management official said last year there are land applications on file in Nevada for enough solar projects to power 10,000 megawatts of electricity.

O'Donnell said eight solar developers are looking at sites near Tonopah.

Solar power plants at the higher elevation in Tonopah, which lies at just over 6,000 feet, would attract 6 to 7 percent more solar energy, he said.

"The challenge is new technology. Sometimes utilities don't want to adopt new technology. Everybody wants to be the third guy. Nobody wants to be the first," O'Donnell said.

The first kid on the block was Nevada Solar One, constructed by the Spanish conglomerate Accioia Energy in El Dorado Valley near Boulder City, a 64-megawatt plant that went on line last June, the first solar thermal plant to open in the U.S. in 16 years. It's big enough to power 40,000 households.

The possibilities are endless, O'Donnell said. He cited a report that solar generating plants on just 10 percent of the BLM land in Nevada could power the entire U.S. While Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano told the Western Governors Association last June she didn't want Arizona to be an energy farm exporting power to California, O'Donnell said Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons has been receptive to exporting power across the state line.

Ausra expects to supply power to Nevada Power Co. in Las Vegas and to utilities in California. O'Donnell said California needs to generate 17,000 megawatts of green power by 2010, two and a half to three times the total power generation in Nevada.