By Mark Waite
Nye County District Attorney Brian Kunzi inserted another “emergency” action item during a routine county commission conference call on Monday, this time to resolve a last-minute snag that would allow SolarReserve to close financing Wednesday.
Kunzi said Rob Howe, project manager for the proposed SolarReserve, a proposed 110-megawatt, concentrated solar plant at Crescent Dunes, wanted commissioners to exempt NV Energy from obligations of the development agreement.
Nye County is assigning a U.S. Bureau of Land Management right-of-way for the Anaconda Moly substation to NV Energy, which is several miles from the project site.
Howe said it was a last minute snag that needed to be resolved to close financing, Kunzi said. The U.S. Department of Energy approved a $737 million loan guarantee for the project last April. NV Energy already signed a 25-year power purchase agreement with SolarReserve.
“I don’t see on the agenda something for emergency items. Can we go ahead and do it anyway?” Schinhofen asked.
“We can go ahead and do an emergency item any time. There’s no requirement for an agenda item,” Kunzi said.
Eastley described it as less of a waiver and more of a clarification of the true intent of the development agreement.
Schinhofen wanted assurances the only part of the development agreement that would be changed is the right-of-way before casting his vote.
Kunzi, who took office in January, introduced an emergency item at a July 26 county commission teleconference to join a federal lawsuit over Yucca Mountain.
In his justification for the emergency action, Kunzi said the Pahrump Valley Times was interpreting emergencies too strictly. In a letter to the PVT, Kunzi wrote, “emergencies are the result of unforeseen circumstances that need immediate action.”
SolarReserve spokesman Andi Plocek said Thursday the financing hasn’t closed yet. She said the company can disclose more information next week.
SolarReserve officials had planned an official groundbreaking this month Nye County Interim Community Development Director Darrell Lacy said the plan now is for a ceremony next month when members of the Nevada congressional delegation can attend.
ACS Cobra was selected as the general contractor, they have already broken ground on the salt tower, Plocek said. SolarReserve is preparing an office in the Mizpah Hotel, she said.
SolarReserve will use technology developed by Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne, which allows electricity to be stored for up to eight hours after sunset. Solar energy from the heliostats will focus power on the largest molten salt tower in the world. The plant will provide enough power for 75,000 Nevada households.
The SolarReserve project is expected to create 600 direct jobs and more than 4,000 indirect jobs during construction. Once operational it will require 45 employees.
The project is already bringing in workers to Tonopah, putting hotel rooms at a premium, along with other developments like the exploration going on at the Allied Nevada mining project on Hasbrouck Mountain, just across the Esmeralda County line.
Joanne Campbell, general manager of the 88-room Best Western Hi-Desert Inn, said rooms are difficult to get, not only because of people working on the solar project, but drillers exploring for gold and employees doing a six-week stint at the Tonopah Test Range.
“It’s very hard to get rooms at this point here. I’d say for us, we’ve got other things going on too. The test range too also brings in quite a few people. I guess we’re going to be selling out probably through mid-November,” Campbell said.
Despite the best intentions, and most wishful thinking, solar energy economics are simply awful. Any sizable solar program is completely dependent on subsidization. Any any pollyanish promises are likely highly suspect.
We don’t need energy – per se – we need power. Energy is useful, but power is valuable. Are wind/solar going to be there when you need it – probably not, which we just witnessed when over 4,000,000 people were without power in Arizona and California. Where was the wind and solar which was need right at that moment??
And how many people really believe that one utility worker caused the whole outage? Can we expect more of this when solar is to contribute a larger amount of energy because of not having it on demand?
Fossil fuels provide incredible utility because of their vast flexibility – ON DEMAND.
The creation of jobs is more important than the economics of solar power. As more power distribution company’s are mandated to supply higher percentages of “green” energy, it’s almost a sure bet that the reliability of turning on a switch to have instant power will be reduced.
Full speed ahead. Get it built. Just look at how many jobs will be created? How many hotel rooms will be rented long term. How many foreclosed McMansions will be used to house the new influx of workers. No one will care if it works economically or people can afford the cost from new adventure. It will have prevented workers from being in the unemployment lines…….or worse. Those workers will be the lucky ones.
I tend to agree with the above argument. Solar and Wind will only be a supplement and it will take a very long time before it becomes a mainstream source.
As a sidebar, if that outage was caused by ONE person in ONE substation, what does this say about the grids stability? Power systems are designed to stabilize through first, second and sometimes even third contingencies and one incident in one part of the system should have never caused such a wide-spread outage.
Years ago the “Great Northeast Blackout” in which a 7 state grid cascaded into shutdown was traced to one incorrectly adjusted fault sensing relay on one transmission line in Canada. That was back in 1969 and since then changes were supposedly made to our grid to prevent this. Solar and Wind could conceivably be used to supplement peak loads, but it will be a while before it can even pay for itself to do so.
This whole project is a scam. ALL solar projects are. ALL are built with TAXPAYER “credits”, “rebates”, or “incentives”. All. None can stand on their own two feet because they are not competitive.
HOW MUCH WILL THE RETAIL RATE FOR ENERGY COST PER KW-HR FROM THIS PLANT?
Go ahead. Ask that question. See if you get an answer.
The ONLY reason any utility buys from these kind of boondoggles is because they are FORCED to thru “mandates”.
Hey PVT, do a story on the cost to US, the ratepayers, for the proportion of energy that will come from this boondoggle.