Work on North America's biggest solar power plant will start next year in Ontario,

  Canadian province's energy minister said once complete in 2010, the 40-megawatt project, near Sarnia in southwestern Ontario , will be able to supply enough emission-free electricity to power up to 24,000 homes

Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Thu May 24, 12:20 PM ET

In Germany a law guarantees that owners of solar panels get a fixed price when they produce more solar energy than they consume and sell the excess back to the national electricity grid. In Spain , ordinances require "that new and renovated buildings include solar [power]."

Already, global production of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells, which turn sunlight directly into electricity, has risen six-fold since 2000 and grew 41 percent in 2006 alone, says the report from the Washington, DC-based Worldwatch Institute and the Prometheus Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

That makes solar power the world's fastest growing energy source, though grid-connected solar capacity still makes up less than 1 percent of the world market.

The legal atmosphere in the United States remains largely hostile to solar power, Worldwatch's Sawin said.

Still, she remains optimistic about solar energy's future.

"The conventional energy industry will be surprised by how quickly solar PV becomes mainstream -- cheap enough to provide carbon-free electricity on rooftops, while also meeting the energy needs of hundreds of millions of poor people who currently lack electricity," she said.

Investors bask in solar power's sun

Silicon Valley startup Ausra says it can generate cheap, reliable electricity from the sun. Fortune's Marc Gunther looks at whether solar power's day has finally come.

By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer

September 13 2007: 10:36 AM EDT

 

(Fortune Magazine) -- By now, you've probably heard that the solar energy business is booming. Wal-Mart (Charts, Fortune 500) and Tiffany's, Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500) and Google, Estee Lauder and Target (Charts, Fortune 500), Kohl's and Staples - all use or have announced plans to use solar photovoltaic panels on their rooftops to power their businesses.

But you may not have noticed the arrival - actually, the revival - of another solar technology, called solar thermal. Whereas solar photovoltaic panels are installed directly on buildings and convert sunlight into electricity, solar thermal power is more complicated: it uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight and heat liquids, which are then used to drive turbines to make electricity

Solar thermal has as much potential as solar photovoltaics and maybe more because it can be deployed on a large scale - big enough to light up shopping malls or towns, not just a home or a building.

Cleaning up coal's bad rap

Like solar photovoltaics, solar thermal has been around for a long time. The problem is, until now, it's been too expensive and the electricity generation too intermittent (think lack of sunlight) to compete with coal or nuclear power plants.

Solar thermal's day, however, may finally have arrived, thanks to improved technology, federal tax credits and state requirements that utilities buy power from renewable sources. Federal climate change legislation - which, if enacted, would drive up the cost of electricity from fossil fuels - has also tilted the playing field in favor of low-carbon power sources like solar thermal and wind power.

Today entrepreneurs are racing to cash in. Three large-scale solar thermal plants have been announced in recent months in California, the latest coming from a Silicon Valley startup called Ausra.

Ausra announced this week that it has raised more than $40 million from venture capital firms Khosla Ventures and Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers, and said it plans to build a 175-megawatt solar thermal power plant at an undisclosed location in central California.

Read more on the Green Biz

Begun five years ago as an Australian company called Solar Heat and Power, Ausra relocated to Palo Alto last year with the backing of well-respected technology investors Khosla (a co-founder of Sun Microsystems (Charts, Fortune 500)) and Ray Lane (the former president of Oracle (Charts, Fortune 500)), both of whom sit on the company's board.

"We are disruptively lower cost than existing solar technologies," says John O'Donnell, Ausra's executive vice president, and a longtime technology industry executive.

Ausra isn't the only company that's betting big on solar thermal.

A Spanish firm called Acciona Solar Power began operating a 64-megawatt solar thermal plant in the desert south of Las Vegas in June. Pacific Gas & Electric (Charts, Fortune 500) said in July that it will contract to buy 550 megawatts of solar thermal power to be produced in the Mojave Desert by an Israeli company called Solel Solar Systems.

And BrightSource Energy, a Oakland, Calif.-based privately held company, said last week that it plans to build a 400-megawatt solar thermal plant, also in the Mojave. Earlier, Stirling Energy Systems of Phoenix, Arizona, announced plans for two solar thermal plants in partnership with utilities in southern California.

Vinod Khosla, one of Silicon Valley's most powerful venture capitalists and an Ausra investor (see "24 top innovators" ), boasted recently that the company's first solar thermal plant would be cheaper than any of the "clean coal" plants on the drawing board.

"I'll beat them any day of the week on price, and I'll build them more quickly. I'll challenge anybody with this," Khosla told the Toronto Sun.

Rupert Murdoch's climate crusade

Such braggadocio is often heard these days in Silicon Valley, where clean energy startups are as ubiquitous as dot-coms were in the late 1990s. But Ausra is a worth a look for a couple of reasons - the pedigree of its backers and the fact that it is part of a boomlet in the solar thermal business.

Ausra executives say the company's technology and manufacturing plans will reduce the capital costs of building solar thermal plans. Once its plants are running, and its borrowing costs come down, the company says it will sell electricity for much less than existing solar or wind installations.

"As soon as we can build solar power projects with the same cost of capital as building conventional coal or natural gas plants," O'Donnell says, "we'll deliver electricity at the same cost as coal."

If so, that by itself would be a significant breakthrough.

A second claim being made by Ausra is equally bold. The company says, rain or shine, its plants will be able to store heat for up to 20 hours, allowing it to sell electricity to the grid whenever demand is greatest.

These claims need to be regarded skeptically. But the fact that venture capitalists, utilities and startups are pouring significant money into solar thermal suggests that this technology isn't smoke and mirrors - to the contrary, it may be an opportunity to replace smoke with mirrors. 

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Major solar power plant opens in Portugal 's south

Wed Mar 28, 12:24 PM ET

SERPA, Portugal (Reuters) - One of the world's largest solar energy plants, covering the hills of a valley dotted with olive groves in southern Portugal , started delivering electricity to about 8,000 homes on Wednesday.

The solar panels, which are raised around 2 meters off the ground, cover an area of 60 hectares (150 acres) and produce 11 megawatts of electricity in one of Europe's sunniest spots -- Portugal's poor agricultural Alentejo region.

Kevin Walsh, managing director for Renewable Energy GE, which built the project, said the plant was expected to have the highest capacity of any solar energy project in the world but a plant in Germany had overtaken it.

"But as far as we know -- thanks to great Portuguese sunshine and high technology -- this plant right here in Serpa is expected to produce the most power -- more than 20 gigawatt-hours per hour," Walsh said.

The plant, which has 52,000 photovoltaic modules, is near the town of Serpa, 125 miles southeast of Lisbon.

The scheme fits into Portugal's plans of reducing its reliance on imported energy and cutting output of greenhouse gasses that feed global warming.

Portugal 's emissions have surged about 37 percent since 1990, one of the highest increases in the world.

By bringing modern technology to one of western Europe's poorest regions, the $75-million plant is expected to bring alternative development to the Alentejo.

There are also plans to build a solar power plant in the neighboring town of Moura.

GM to build world's biggest rooftop solar station: report

LONDON (AFP) - US automobile giant General Motors (GM) will announce on Tuesday that it will build the world's largest rooftop solar power station at its biggest factory in Europe, the Financial Times reported.

The carmaker is working with Veolia Environnement of France and Clairvoyant Energy of the US on the project, which is part of a commitment to greater sustainability.

GM is due to install solar panels on its factory in Saint Petersburg next and is looking at whether to roll out the scheme to its other 19 plants across Europe

"As we develop new solutions in vehicle propulsion to reduce carbon emissions, we are also making significant progress in reducing the impact our facilities have on the environment," said Elizabeth A. Lowery, GM vice president, Environment, Energy and Safety Policy. "Our commitment to expanding the usage of renewable energy sources is part of our coordinated global effort to reduce energy, water consumption, waste and CO2 emissions."

MIAMI (AP) -- Nearly 39,000 Florida Power & Light customers gave the company $11.4 million over four years to develop green energy, but a report released Monday shows that most of the money went toward administrative and marketing costs.