BrightSource Energy closes financing for solar thermal power plant in California's Mojave Desert

[Newsjock]

Source: San Jose Mercury News

Oakland-based BrightSource Energy announced Monday that it has finalized $1.6 billion in loans for Ivanpah, its 392-megawatt solar thermal power plant currently being built in California's Mojave Desert.

And, in a separate transaction, Google (GOOG) announced Monday that it is investing $168 million in the Ivanpah project -- marking Google's largest cleantech investment to date.

... Construction on Ivanpah began in October and is expected to be finished by the end of 2013. But the project has been controversial: several environmental groups raised objections about the impact of the development on native plants and the desert tortoise. Ivanpah pitted the benefits of renewable energy against the fact that land-intensive power plants irrevocably change the desert landscape, and state regulators with the California Energy Commission ultimately ruled that the need to reduce global warming and diversify the state's energy supply took precedence over the impacts on plants and tortoises.

BrightSource maintains that no more than 28 tortoises live on the proposed 3,500-acre Ivanpah site. But environmentalists now estimate that at least 100 tortoises live in the site, and that there are likely to be more. BrightSource has hired independent biologists to relocate tortoises from the construction site and into adjacent locations within the Ivanpah Valley. Desert tortoises spend much of their time in burrows underground, which makes getting an accurate count difficult.

Read more: http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_17820878

[truedelphi]

1. How sad that we use our excess governemnt monies for wars

Rather than to help put solar panels on each individuals' roof tops.

The balance of nature is destroyed by all these huge installations. Plus the world of finances, loans etc can topple even the best laid plans for huge utilities offering alternative energy sources, whereas if each person owned the power, it would be an eternally done deal.

[midnight]

2. That is exactly what I would like to see happen.... Along

with putting our unemployed to work helping to install and maintain this new technology....

[truedelphi]

16. I was just watching some panel on how experts consider

the financing of solar panels as being an impossibility for most people.

They' re saying that the average American family can not handle the loans necessary for the solar panels.

What a bunch of piffle. In every community I have lived in, people spent tens of thousands on their Lexus SUV leases, or Huge Ford Expedition monthly payments, etc. But yet the "experts" say we cannot afford some thirty five thousand per household for solar panels and wind turbine energy?

If we could make it as cool for people to spend money on solar and wind as it is "cool" to rush around in a Hummer, and if as a nation we get rid of the war spending, we could easily become able to replace the 18% of the power coming from nukes with alternative sources over the next ten years.

[AnOhioan]

5. +1

[msongs]

3. with money wasted on that we could put rooftop solar on tens of thousands houses & keep corporate

whores from controlling the electricity market.

[bananas]

9. We need both rooftop as well as large desert solar farms

They will only cover a relatively small part of the desert,
these desert ecosystems will be radically changed by global warming,
don't think you are "preserving" the desert by doing nothing.

[mountainlion55]

4. YES!!

Solar and wind are our best hope right now for good energy. We should build these plants from one end of the country to the other!!!

[Massacure]

6. It'll never pay for itself

The financing cost on $1.6 billion is $8,589,000 a month assuming a 5% interest rate.

Wholesale electricity prices in California sold for on average 4.1 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the EIA.

If Ivanpah produces 392 megawatt hours of electricity, it can generate $16,072 in revenue per hour. That means it would have to produce its rated capacity 534 hours per month just to pay the mortgage. That equates to 17 hours a day.

That power plant isn't going to achieve a 71% (17/24) utilization factor.

[msongs]

7. maybe it's not designed to make a profit, just suck up endless taxpayer subsidies n bailouts nt

[gristy]

8. 5% interest rate sounds high

Utilities dividends average around 4%. They could just issue stock with a promised dividend of 4%, effectively getting themselves a 4% interest rate. Then instead of a required 17/24 utilization rate, they only need 14/24. Still high, I know.

[bananas]

10. Peak load, not "average". nt

[daleo]

11. How long a mortgage are you assuming? n/t

[Massacure]

13. 30 year. n/t

[daleo]

15. I think 40 years is more the norm for utility investments

Though there is some question about the effective life of solar panels.

Consider, though, that fossil fuel and nuclear alternatives are likely to go up substantially in price over the next few decades (declining supplies), while sunlight will remain free. There is also a good prospect that solar technology will come down in price, via new processes and economies of scale.

[Zoeisright]

12. Who the fuck cares?

It's not a terrorist target, it won't kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people if it fails, AND electricity prices are going to go up.

If you add in nuke's REAL cost, including costs of illness and death, it is much, much higher than stated on prospectus pamphlets.

[slackmaster]

14. As a taxpayer and ratepayer, I care about the impact on my budget

I may be on a fixed income some day.