$1.37 billion Federal Loan Guarantees for California Concentrated Solar Generating Plant

Last September, the California assembly passed bills to increase the current 20% by 2010 Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) to 33% by 2020.  Shortly after Governor Schwarzenegger signed an Executive Order (EO) directing the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to adopt regulations increasing California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to 33 percent by 2020.

Today the Department of Energy announced $1.37 billion in loan guarantees for  a concentrated solar generation project in the Mojave Desert by BrightSource Energy.  Construction on the proposed solar thermal plants is expected to begin in the summer of 2010 and all three plants are expected to come on line in 2014.  The power plants are expected to generate about 400 MW of electricity.  This will be the first large scale solar plant to be constructed in California in 20 years.  The power will be delivered to Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison Company (SCE) via an upgraded SCE transmission line.

All together BrightSource has contracts to deliver 2.6 GW of solar generating capacity to California’s power companies.  Concentrated solar generating plants have been built in California, Nevada, and Spain.  The largest is the SEGS solar power plant in California, built 1984 through 1990.

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss

Geoff Zeiss has more than 20 years experience in the geospatial software industry and 15 years experience developing enterprise geospatial solutions for the utilities, communications, and public works industries. His particular interests include the convergence of BIM, CAD, geospatial, and 3D. In recognition of his efforts to evangelize geospatial in vertical industries such as utilities and construction, Geoff received the Geospatial Ambassador Award at Geospatial World Forum 2014. Currently Geoff is Principal at Between the Poles, a thought leadership consulting firm. From 2001 to 2012 Geoff was Director of Utility Industry Program at Autodesk Inc, where he was responsible for thought leadership for the utility industry program. From 1999 to 2001 he was Director of Enterprise Software Development at Autodesk. He received one of ten annual global technology awards in 2004 from Oracle Corporation for technical innovation and leadership in the use of Oracle. Prior to Autodesk Geoff was Director of Product Development at VISION* Solutions. VISION* Solutions is credited with pioneering relational spatial data management, CAD/GIS integration, and long transactions (data versioning) in the utility, communications, and public works industries. Geoff is a frequent speaker at geospatial and utility events around the world including Geospatial World Forum, Where 2.0, MundoGeo Connect (Brazil), Middle East Spatial Geospatial Forum, India Geospatial Forum, Location Intelligence, Asia Geospatial Forum, and GITA events in US, Japan and Australia. Geoff received Speaker Excellence Awards at GITA 2007-2009.

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