Arizona is going to add the largest solar jewel to the eco friendly crown of the planet as it is all set to build, own and operate what would be the largest solar power plant in the world if operating today. Abengoa Solar, a subsidiary of a multi-billion-dollar international technology company, has signed a contract with Arizona Public Service Co. (APS), one of Arizona’s leading energy utilities to makes sure that this amazing project actually crosses all the hurdles and materializes in to reality. The moment it is operational it will produce 280-Megawatts of energy and the plant will sell around $4 billion in clean electricity over 30 years.
The plant, scheduled to go into operation by 2011, is located 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, near Gila Bend, Arizona. It will sell the electricity produced by its huge solar field to APS over the next 30 years for total revenue of around $4 billion, bringing over $1 billion in economic benefits to the state of Arizona. So basically it is not just going to help Arizona get cleaner and greener but will also help it immensely from a fiscal outlook as well. The solar plant has been named Solana, meaning “a sunny place” in Spanish. You can bet that once it is under way, the entire place will be sunny as heaven (Heaven because it is too good to be called hell!)
The Solana Generating Station will have a total capacity of 280 megawatts, enough to power 70,000 homes while avoiding over 400,000 tons of greenhouse gases that would otherwise contribute to global warming and climate change. This means massive reduction in emission of all those greenhouse gases that would otherwise be produced by burning those tons of coal. The plant will employ a proprietary Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) trough technology developed by Abengoa Solar, and will cover a surface of around 1,900 acres. The construction of the Solana Generating Station will create about 1,500 construction jobs and employ 85 skilled full-time workers once completed.
The plant is an absolute boon in terms environment, economic and employment terms and is wonderful inspiration for all those firms that are ready with blueprints of eco friendly projects. Abengoa Solar is currently operating the world’s first commercial CSP solar tower plant in Spain, a demonstration trough plant and the world’s first commercial photovoltaic low concentration plant.
It is also building three more CSP plants in Spain with a total capacity of 120-megawatts, two trough plants that will generate 50-megawatts of electricity each, one tower plant with a capacity of 20-megawatts and two hybrid gas-solar plants in Algeria and Morocco. So basically we are talking about a company that almost is running a chain of environmentally magical projects. This means nothing but good news for all those lobbying for green energy. It seems finally sun is shining bright on renewable resources and their usage!
