Cleantech to build big solar farm (80 MW, California)

[jpak]

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20070707-9999-1b7bizbrfs.html

Cleantech America, a privately held San Francisco company, said it plans to build the world's largest solar power farm near Fresno. The 80-megawatt farm is to occupy up to 640 acres. On completion in 2011, it will be 17 times the size of the largest U.S. solar farm, Cleantech said.

The farm also will be about seven times the size of the world's biggest plant and double the largest planned farm, both in Germany.

<not much more>

[K8-EEE]

1. I'm wondering if we can invest in this??

Not that I'm a huge investor or anything but I'd be willing to buy a few shares in this!

[robinlynne]

2. yes! as per investing, if it is privately held, I would assume that you can not.

But there are others publicly held, for sure.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. The CEO isn't saying how much it will cost

"Barnes declined to give the estimated construction cost."

The website is http://www.cleantech.com/

It has the requisite stock photos of yuppies shaking hands, but little information. It seems to be a venture capital firm; its online database isn't up yet. It sells business reports; its investment product index might be worth consulting, but if they're cherry-picked to reflect well on Cleantech and Cleantech alone, it will be useless for general reference.

"Bottom Line": If they make good on their promises, I'll pin the medal on Barnes myself. But they also seem like every other tech venture capital start-up in America -- most of which announce that they will be financing the Immanent Reign of the Lord, then fold up at the start of the next quarter.

The alt-energy field needs serious financing NOW. Keep your fingers crossed.

--p!

[Bread and Circus]

4. I lived in that area a few summers, they have the sun!!

http://www.cleantechamerica.com/projects/

[Xithras]

5. Sometimes. I do question whether the CV is a good place for this.

Lifelong CV resident here. The Valley does get good Sun during the summer, but it is plagued by two issues which may come to bite any large scale PV projects like this. First, we have some extreme pollution problems here. Our air quality consistently ranks as the worst in the nation...worse than LA, or New York, or any other polluted urban area you can think of. The air pollution is so bad that our farmers occasionally complain of the crop impact the pollution causes, as it reduces the spectrum of light available to plants on the ground. This will no doubt impact PV panels too. As an added complexity, a very large percentage of that pollution is particulate matter...primarily dust...kicked into the air by agricultural activities. As any Valley resident with a car can attest, keeping shiny things dust free in the summer is a full time job. I'd be curious to know how they plan to keep the panels clean (during almond harvesting season where I live, auto windows must be washed at least weekly or you CANNOT see out of them).

The second problem happens the other half of the year. As any Valley resident can also attest to, Tule Fog is the bane of all things sun-loving. When combined with our annual winter inversion layer, we end up with an unbroken cloud ceiling that can block the sun for days or weeks at a time. It's like mother nature throws a great gray blanket over the valley. No PV system is going to operate in that weather.

I welcome any attempts to build commercial PV systems to wean us off fossil fuels (the Valley is powered primarily by NG plants, with a strong dose of hydro-power), but think they're underestimating the challenges of building here.

[Bread and Circus]

7. Fascinating, I was there two summers working w/ Mexican Americans

Awesome peeps, and man they work so goddam hard.

I don't remember pollution. I remember how the air smelled heavy with peaches. It was beautiful the time I spent there.

Also, the mountains in the background are beautiful. King's Canyon National Park is one of my favorite places on earth.

I can't say much for Fresno though. I got my car stolen there.

[Xithras]

11. Cough, cough, hack, hack

When were you here? 1950? Visibility here today is about 10 miles. The foothills of the Sierras sit about 20 miles to the east of me, and they are completely invisible in the greyish-brown haze. The Coast Range sits even closer, and I can just barely make out the outline of the tallest peaks. And today is a GOOD day...the official AQ index lists our quality as "OK"...on bad smog days, visibility can drop to just a couple of miles, and haze can be perceptible at distances as little as a couple hundred yards. I've lived here all my life, and I don't EVER remember a clear summer. We do get some beautiful scenery in the spring and fall, when the winds are high enough to blow the pollution elsewhere.

http://www2.nature.nps.gov/air/edu/someair/parks/seki/IIA2a.html

http://www.sparetheair.org/teachers/bigpicture/IIIA1a.html

If you follow that first link, the first photo on the first page shows some nast air pollution in the valley. Today is just slightly less serious than that. Last week was worse than that photo. Did I mention that we also have the highest athsma rates, and some of the highest lung cancer rates, in the nation? Heck, when the air gets bad enough, the local schools (at the prompting of a state board) implement "Red Flag Days". The pollution literally gets so bad that the schools won't even let the kids play in the playground...recess has to be held indoors. The Valley is a bowl, and pollution generated here tends to stay here a LONG time. Most of the valley is former marshland and swamp, and modern agricultural activities tend to kick up huge amounts of fine silty dust that also hangs in the atmosphere for a while. It gives our smog a "denser" quality than the pure automotive and industrial smog found in most other parts of the country.

The poor AQ around here has a huge impact on my environmental perspectives, and is why I'm so active in fighting for local environmental causes. Sadly, this region is also very conservative (Bush carried my home county in 2000 & 2004), and tends to treat us as annoying hangers-on. We did get smog mitigation fees levied against the home builders, but they weren't high enough to do what they were originally intended to do (reduce the desireability of building here).

[garybeck]

6. i wonder what panels they are going to use

Could it be the NanoSolar panels that are supposedly going to be produced in California.

[NNadir]

8. Wow! That's great! Yet another "world's largest!" Mega"watts" too!

Let's cut from peak power to energy, since it seems impossible for JPak to master this point.

80 Mega"watts" at 20% capacity utilization is 0.0055 exajoules. Note that 20% capacity utilization is optimistic.

California's electrical energy demand as of 2005 was 287,977 gigawatt-hours - a unit of energy. This corresponds to 1.04 exajoules:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/electricity_generation.html

What is really fun about this link is that it gives pretty up to date information on what portion of that electricity comes from various magical "renewable" sources.

Um...let's see...hydroelectric...geothermal...wind...um...oh here it is! Solar!

What?!?

The production of solar energy production is falling in California!?! Who would have guessed it, what with the brazillion solar roofs bill and all!!!!!!

In the year 2000 magical solar industry produced 860 gigawatt-hours out of 287,977 gigawatt-hours or put another way 0.3% of California's electricity in that year.

In the year 2005, just 5 years later, much of it spent under the rule of the ever popular "environmentalist" Governor Hydrogen Hummer, California solar production had fallen to 660 gigawatt-hours, or 0.22% of California's electricity.

It seems that California isn't conserving either. Electricity demand rose 7,481 gigawatt-hours since the solar industry began to decline in California, meaning that the demand increased by a factor of more than 11 times the total output of the solar industry.

Of course, nobody wants the solar industry to continue to fail to address climate change. Everybody is cheering loudly for it, just as they do decade after decade after decade.

But solar energy is trivial and the appeal to it is nothing more than pure magical thinking. It is a completely insufficient tool to address global climate change. Appeal to it is nothing more than denial, and nothing more.

[Systematic Chaos]

9. Obscure role-playing computer game reference alert....

NNadir has gotten better at Shooting Fish in a Barrel (587*)!

Mind you, the current skill cap in EverQuest 2 stands at 350 and will become 400 later this year with the next expansion.

I now return you to your wet dream about a solar pool heater.

:rofl:

[NNadir]

10. Let's not give me too much credit.

It was more of a bluefish in a child's beach pail.