Renewable Energy Consulting – PPA Partners, LLC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Lori Stofft
Director, Public Relations and Marketing
Arizona Western College
Office: +1 928-314-9595
Cell: +1 928-246-4834
Email:Lori.stofft@azwestern.edu

www.azwestern.edu

AWC Solar Array Groundbreaking Ceremony

Join Arizona Western College in a groundbreaking ceremony for an innovative 5 MW Solar Array to be completed Fall 2011.
This first-of-its-kind array is a landmark project for AWC, Yuma, and Arizona.

Date:

Tuesday,  May 24, 2011

Location:

Arizona Western College
24th Street Entrance, P1 Parking Lot
Yuma, AZ

Agenda:

7:45 Media Registration

8:15 Ceremony

8:45 Breakfast Reception with Vendor Demonstrations, Schoening Conference Center, 3C

This 5 MW array will generate virtually 100% of the college’s daytime electricity needs and will serve as a world-class research and testing site for government and corporate application. Educational and workforce training opportunities for students from Elementary to University will enhance our community and support ongoing economic development.

Why Solar?

According to the “Guinness Book of World Records”, Yuma, Arizona is the sunniest place on earth. This, along with ample land and access to west coast  markets makes Yuma the best place to install the single largest solar array on any U.S. college or university campus.

Combined with the existing rooftop array on the AWC Agriculture and Science building, the total solar installation at the college will be 5 megawatts, and will generate enough energy to cover virtually 100% of the college’s daytime energy needs.

The new 4.995 megawatt array will serve as a foundation for local education and workforce development in renewable energy technology and engineering. The main array will be joined by multiple testing and demonstration sites for manufacturers from around the world to test their latest products.

Array Characteristics

• Energy Generation, Education, Research and Innovation
• Multiple Photovoltaic Technologies, including
  • High Concentration
  • Low Concentration
  • Mono Crystalline
  • Poly Crystalline
  • Thin Film
• Single and dual axis tracking
• State-of-the-art metering and inverter technology
• Private test beds
• Level playing field – consistent test platform

Curriculum

Currently in place:

• First Installer Class graduated Spring 2011
• Green technology embedded curriculum in science, engineering, and career and technical programs
• AWC is working with local high schools and the local workforce development organization to deliver a weatherization program

Planned:

• Cutting edge solar technology curriculum that will include the campus PV array and testing facilities as learning laboratories
• Certificates and degrees in solar technology and solar installation are currently under development with additional classes anticipated to begin spring 2011
• Associate in science degree in renewable energy with transfer pathways to the baccalaureate degree beginning fall 2011

Campus Map with Planned Solar Deployment

Planned solar deployments in orange.

Existing Rooftop Array

• 105.6 kilowatts
• Located on the roof of the AWC Ag & Science Complex
• Data available online, used by K-12 educators around the region
• Photo album here

Download the Solar Array Information Sheet

For more information:

Technical Questions:

Bill Smith, Director of Facilities Management and Planning

928-314-9472

bill.smith@azwestern.edu

Media Requests and Tours:

Lori Stofft, Director of Marketing & Public Relations

928-314-9595

lori.stofft@azwestern.edu

Project Partners:

The US Congress has released a draft bill that would provide tax credits for manufacturers of renewable energy equipment and funding for other sources of clean energy.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich., unveiled the draft legislation which aims to encourage domestic manufacturing of energy equipment and renewable fuel development.

The proposed legislation would modify the Section 48C advanced manufacturing tax credit to provide an uncapped 30 percent investment tax credit for expenditures to re-equip, expand or modify facilities that manufacture and fabricate solar energy property, fuel cell power plants, and advanced energy storage systems (including batteries for advanced vehicles).

The proposal would extend for two years (through 2012) and codify the direct payment in lieu of tax credit program that was initially created by Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for renewable energy facilities (e.g., wind, solar, and biomass facilities), combined heat and power facilities, fuel cells and microturbines that qualify for the production tax credit and investment tax credit. Among other technical improvements, the proposal would clarify that real estate investment trusts may participate in the program.

Under current law, residential fuel cells are eligible for a 30 percent investment tax credit (capped at $1,000 per kilowatt hour of capacity). Commercial fuel cells are eligible for a 30 percent investment tax credit (capped at $3,000 per kilowatt hour of capacity). The proposal would harmonize the capacity limitation of residential fuel cells to the capacity limitation of commercial fuel cells (i.e., $3,000 per kilowatt hour of capacity). Furthermore, the proposal would allow micro-combined heat and power systems to qualify for the 30 percent investment tax credit for residential energy efficient property.

The proposal would also extend the 50 percent investment tax credit for alternative vehicle refueling property for three years (through 2013). The proposal would also make modifications clarifying the availability of this credit for electric vehicle refueling pump property and for property that fuels non-motor vehicles that run on hydrogen fuel cells.

Source: Fuel Cell Today

California, United States — Rosendin Electric will break ground this week on a new photovoltaic power installation project for the Antelope Valley Union High School District. This 9.4-megawatt (MW) installation spans 10 schools and is the largest school solar project undertaken in California to date.

The Rosendin Electric Solar Division has been contracted to support engineering for the US $50 million Antelope Valley UHSD solar project, as well as assuming full responsibility for procurement and construction.

“With the addition of the Antelope Valley contract, Rosendin Electric becomes one of the largest solar distributed generation EPC contractors in the West,” said Duncan Frederick, director of solar operations for Rosendin Electric. “We have always been committed to delivering alternative energy solutions, and we have an unprecedented track record in wind farm installation. With the addition of this project to our portfolio of solar projects installed over the past year, we are quickly building the same reputation for delivering solar power.”

Rosendin Electric recently completed the installation of a 1.2-MW solar array at the Mineta San Jose International Airport with partner Canadian Solar, and is in the process of completing similar projects for the Hollister Wastewater Treatment Project, Hollister Unified School District, San Ysidro School District and the Arizona Western College in Yuma, Arizona. Rosendin Electric will also  complete a 5-MW solar project for the Sunset Reservoir in San Francisco within the next two months.

By:Eric Wesoff

VC heavyweight Vinod Khosla and Bill Gates get behind a wildly unorthodox nuclear reactor design.

“[It's like taking] the entire nuclear infrastructure and collapsing it into one vessel.”
— TerraPower’s John Gilleland at an April 2009 presentation at UC Berkeley

Can nuclear power be considered green?

Greentech Media has been on the forefront of covering nuclear power as a potential clean energy source for several years now.  We have taken detailed looks at small modular reactors (SMRs) and even looked at some activity in fusion science (including SMRs from NuScale and Hyperion, fusion from General Fusion and TriAlpha, nuclear waste disposal from Kurion, Small Modular Reactor report here).

It’s always a contentious issue.

Yes, nuclear power is carbon-free in operation — but uranium extraction and plant construction can hardly be considered carbon neutral.  And yes, it’s baseload power with a low price per kilowatt hour, but it’s very expensive to build and harrowingly difficult to finance.

And then there are the huge and vexing issues of safety and proliferation.

But TerraPower’s wildly unorthodox reactor design actually can consume used nuclear fuel as its power source.  And the firm has just raised a $35 million financing round.

Bill Gates, Massachusetts-based VC firm Charles River Ventures and Khosla Ventures joined in the Round B, according to a Reuters article.

It’s an absolutely audacious VC bet and the entrepreneurs and investors involved deserve credit for sheer (I don’t know if I can say this in a family publication) brass balls, given the staggering technical, regulatory and temporal risks involved.

Background on the TerraPower idea

TerraPower was spun out of Intellectual Ventures (the think-tank created by ex-Microsoft chief scientist Nathan Myhrvold) to develop nuclear reactors that run primarily on depleted uranium. Blll Gates is an active funder and participant in the firm and, based on comments from the CEO, money is not an obstacle.

Switching from enriched fuel to DU reduces risks associated with nuclear proliferation and transportation as well as the amount of nuclear waste. TerraPower’s reactor does, however, need fissile material (i.e., enriched uranium) to initiate a reaction.

TerraPower has at least 20 employees and is run by John Gilleland, a big name in the reactor physics field and the manager of the nuclear program at Intellectual Ventures. Before Terrapower, he was the CEO of Archimedes Technology Group, where he focused on new technologies for mitigating waste from nuclear weapons, reprocessing spent reactor fuel and enriching uranium. Before that, he was at Bechtel and was the managing director at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor program. In 16 years at General Atomics, he headed the construction of an advanced fusion research test bed.

In an April 2009 presentation in Berkeley, Calif., Gilleland described the TerraWave Traveling Wave Reactor (TWR) as embodying a “self-sustaining deflagration of breeding and burning,” with “waves of breeding and burning propagating through fertile material indefinitely.”  The presentation also claims that a “core life of 60 years is practical.”

The firm has hired an all-star team of nuclear engineers to design this revolutionary type of reactor.

In a recently published paper co-authored by Myhrvold, representatives of LLNL, and the Hoover Institute entitled “Nuclear fission power for 21st century needs: Enabling technologies for large-scale, low-risk, affordable nuclear electricity,” the team proposes a “[r]epresentative system-level integration that obviates all fuel supply issues, including the entire set of isotopic enrichment ones, while rendering comparably useful as nuclear fuels all of the actinide elements and isotopes. It entirely avoids transport and reprocessing and the full set of ad hoc waste disposal issues, and completely precludes all those involving proliferation/diversion of fissile isotopes into weapons programs. It provides zero biospheric hazard in the event of either natural or man-made catastrophe. It requires — indeed, admits of — no operator control actions, other than initial start-up and final shutdown commands, so that operator errors are entirely precluded; during the half-century of potentially full-power operational life in between these two commands, it thermostatically regulates in an entirely automatic manner its own nuclear power generation to match the heat removed from its core in a time-varying fashion.”

The team concludes: “We therefore project a bright future for cheap electricity safely obtained in >10 TWe quantities from nuclear power reactors of this new type, moreover over multi-century time frames.”

TerraPower has stated that commercial deployment can begin in less than 15 years.

The firm is considering modular 100 MWe and 300 MWe sizes as well as 1 GWe units.

Regulatory quicksand and long time frames

Introducing a small modular reactor like the NuScale design, a new reactor that still bears a great resemblance to existing light water reactors, is a challenge to the testing and approval process of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.  It takes years and years from the date of submission of plans to approval and eventual site permitting and construction.

Introducing a new reactor design like TerraPower, one that operates on radically different physical principles than that of a light water reactor, is a proposition that is saddled with profound marketplace and regulatory challenges.

It is unlikely that some of the investors will live to see the plant actually switched on and operating.  It would seem that the time frame would require a different type of VC fund lifetime instead of the typical eight to ten years.  Clearly, Khosla and Gates want to partner with or license the technology to Toshiba or Areva or Babcock & Wilcox.

Nuclear remains a financial and safety challenge, and nuclear’s detractors make good arguments — everyone from Amory Lovins and his Rocky Mountain Institute to NIRS, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, are able to point out the cost overruns and safety concerns (more valid objections can be found here).

About 20 percent of U.S. electricity comes from nuclear sources.  Other nations like China, India and France will rely on nuclear for baseload power to an even greater degree going forward.  We can’t just wish it away.

TerraPower will look to partner with firms and nations other than the U.S. where nuclear is less stigmatized — perhaps Russia, China, India or France.

In any case, kudos to the entrepreneurs involved for thinking way outside of the box — and to the investors who are putting their money where their mouth is.