Posts Tagged ‘eSolar’

Article courtesy of The Las Cruces Bulletin

By Marvin Tessneer

Alternative energy companies are conducting research and development projects directed toward a solar-thermal power plant to be located a mile east of the border town of Santa Teresa in Dona Ana County. The eSolar power technology company is designing a 5-megawatt project in Lancaster, California, as a plant research project for NRG Energy.

“It’s a small version of what we’re going to build in Santa Teresa,” said David Knox of NRG Energy. “It’s a process that we go through before starting actual construction. And from that project we are gaining a lot of insight that will support the building and operation of our Santa Teresa project.”

NRG is planning on breaking ground for its solar-thermal power plant later this year. It plans to have the plant operational by 2011. The Dona Ana County Commission has already approved land-use and building permits for the site.Construction is expected to bring about 400 jobs during a 14- to 16-month period and create 20 permanent jobs when the plant is fully operational, NRG officials said. NRG is planning to build its plant on 450 acres using eSolar’s concentrated solar power (CSP) technology and will be the first commercial solar-thermal power plant in New Mexico.

The technology is made up of a field of flat mirrors, called heliostats, that direct and concentrate sunlight to thermal receivers mounted on towers about 180 feet high. The concentrated sunlight heats the water in the thermal receivers to produce steam that turns turbines to generate clean electrical power. The mirrors track the sun with a calibrated system that can follow and gather the sunlight throughout the day and achieves one of the highest power-to-land ratios in the industry.

NRG plans to develop a project that, at peak capacity, will produce 92-milowatts of electricity that could supply power to about 74,000 homes. The plant will be connected to an existing 115-kilovolt El Paso Electric Company transmission line, and the company has a 20-year power purchase agreement.

The plant also would bring a new tax base and economic benefits from purchases of goods and services during construction. NRG also expects the solar-thermal plant to use same amount of water that would be consumed in a residential development.

New Mexico elected officials are pleased with the solar plans. Governor Bill Richardson said of the NRG project, “With 300 days of sun every year, a highly skilled labor force and a friendly business environment, New Mexico is well-positioned to lead the nation in solar energy production. eSolar, NRG and El Paso Electric are helping us make New Mexico’s renewable energy a potential a reality.”

U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman said, “This plant is an excellent example of the kind of projects New Mexico and the rest of the nation need to further diversify America’s energy portfolio. I compliment El Paso Electric, NRG and eSolar for working to create green jobs in New Mexico that will help to responsibly meet our growing demand for electricity.”

Article courtesy of The Las Cruces Bulletin

By Kristine Sandrick

Capturing the sun’s energy using mirrors to fuel southern New Mexico and west Texas homes was the hot topic of the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance annual appreciation luncheon Friday, March 12, at Hotel Encanto de Las Cruces.

Luncheon keynote speaker Jim Shandalov, eSolar’s vice president of business development, talked about his company’s new power plant under construction in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. The company plans to break ground this spring and have the power center operating by summer 2011.

Shandalov said the 92-megawatt plant is being constructed in unincorporated Dona Ana County, 1 mile north of the Mexican border off the Pete Domenici Highway.

The Santa Teresa plant will use 390,000 mirrors to collect energy, and the turbines will be connected to El Paso Electric power lines. Shandalov said the electricity will be enough to power 74,000 homes in peak production.

The company’s concentrating solar power (CSP) technology uses a field of small, flat mirrors – called heliostats – to concentrate sunlight onto a thermal receiver mounted on solar power towers approximately 180 feet high. The captured sunlight heats water in a thermal receiver to produce steam that powers a traditional turbine generator and produces electricity. The eSolar technology leverages a highly accurate system to track the sun over the course of the day.

Due to its modular design and preassembled components, the eSolar solution allows plants to be sited on private land parcels near existing transmission lines and points of consumption.

“It’s a 500-acre site, which is a lot less land and uses less steel than a typical plant, but will create more processing power,” he said. “There will be more (boiler) towers and more mirrors than at our 5-megawatt Sun Tower plant in Lancaster (Calif.)” In addition to the Lancaster plant, which opened in August 2009, eSolar has solar energy partnerships in India, China and South Africa.

Idealab – an Internet search engine company that was bought by Yahoo! – created eSolar just three years ago in Pasadena, California.

“New Mexico in general has done such a tremendous job to bring us here,” Shandalov said. “That’s what brought us here. The site is directly adjacent to El Paso Electric lines and Dona Ana County is supplying the water for the coolers.”

He added that there is a good workforce available to fill the 400 jobs created during the 14- to 16-month construction period.

Shandalov said the plant is built to last 30 years and the only major maintenance required is keeping the mirrors clean and replacing them as necessary.

Also during Friday’s luncheon, MVEDA’s chief executive officer Davin Lopez presented the nonprofit agency’s new marketing look, which he said will help southern New Mexico better attract national site selectors.

“Our goal is to make this area competitive across the country. When people think of New Mexico, they think of how rural it is so we want to broaden what they think of us as a region,” Lopez said.

MVEDA’s new logo emphasizes the “MV,” which stands for Mesilla Valley, and clearly identifies the area’s location with the state. Lopez also presented a new MVEDA website that emphasizes the availability of “the right space” for both commercial land and aerospace development. The website also has a language translator so it can be read by anyone anywhere in the world.

For more information, visit www. nmborderplex.com.

Article Courtesy of the Las Cruces Sun-News

By the end of the year, California-based eSolar hopes to begin construction on a solar power plant near the Mexican border that will include 500,000 mirrors and is scheduled to provide power to El Paso Electric Co. for 20 years. The plant should be ready by 2012.

That was the news from Jim Shandalov, eSolar’s vice president of business development. Shandalov spoke Friday at the Mesilla Valley Economic Development Alliance annual appreciation luncheon at Hotel Encanto.

“It’s the power tower technology that will take sunlight from the sky,” Shandalov said.

The power plant will use the mirrors to reflect sunlight onto towers where water will be heated and produce steam that will then be used to turn turbines.

More than 100 people were on hand for the luncheon that also featured the unveiling of a new branding campaign for MVEDA. The economic development organization has a new logo and a revamped Web site.

“We do compete nationally and to compete we needed to raise our game,” Davin Lopez, MVEDA president and CEO, said.

The luncheon takes place annually so MVEDA can say “thanks” to its partners in the community

Happy New Year and welcome to 2010.  As we start a new year it is always important to reflect upon the past year’s events, both the challenges and the opportunities, and use these experiences to change strategies and/or direction where they are needed to become more productive and successful.

We started 2009 with what I believe were a greater amount of “unknowns” than “knowns”;  fears following a stock market crash, government bailouts, mass foreclosures, growing unemployment rates, and discussions of a recession was the topic of many conversations.   These were the challenges over the past year that all communities, businesses, and economic development agencies had to deal with, not just MVEDA.  As a region, Dona Ana County was not immune to this crisis.  We began the year at 5.5% unemployment and ended the year hovering around 7%.  However, compared to a 7.8% unemployment rate at the State level and a 9.4% rate at the national level (as of November), Dona Ana County actually fared pretty well.  And although we experienced the loss of a large employer with the Frontier Airlines’ reservation center closing here in Las Cruces, we were also balanced by increases in hiring by other service centers including Sitel, CyraCom, and Convergys.  We also experienced some decline in production/manufacturing jobs and the loss of Multi-Plastics.  However, we also experienced an unprecedented level of interest by companies in the emerging alternative energy sector which has led to some key opportunities; earlier in the year eSolar and NRG Energy announced a 92 megawatt solar project for Santa Teresa and earlier today, Johnson Plate and Tower announced their plans to build a wind tower manufacturing facility, also in Santa Teresa.    Sapphire Energy has invested $8 million in its research and development facility at the Las Cruces West Mesa Industrial Park and will invest another $100 million in Southern New Mexico to produce biofuel from algae.  Along with other alternative energy groups who have identified the region for their projects, Dona Ana County could realize up to 200 new jobs and up to $300 million dollars in new capital investments in the years to come as a result of 2009 activity.

At MVEDA, we enter 2010 optimistically.  After dropping out of the top five rankings of the best performing small cities by Forbes and the Milken Institute between 2002 and 2006, the Las Cruces NM MSA has again made the list of the Milken Institute’s top ten “Best Performing Small Cities.”  As Spaceport America comes on-line and if some of the other projects in our pipeline materialize, it should lead to regaining a top five position in the near future.

But we also realize that we have not yet fully escaped the economic crisis of the past year.  We know that economists are now beginning to talk about a recovery.  We know the current holiday shopping season experienced a 3.5% increase over last year’s holiday season illustrating an increase in consumer confidence.  We know from reports that foreclosure numbers will decrease from the levels experienced in 2008 and 2009.   We also know we have a pipeline of projects and companies that we are working with who are considering the region for growth.  We know that there is a growing alternative energy industry with its eyes on New Mexico and that MVEDA has been aggressive in gathering the attention of this industry.  But we also know that we still have a lot more to do.   But at least we enter the New Year with a few more “knowns” than the “unknowns” of 2009.

The June 11th announcement by El Paso Electric and NRG Energy that a 92-megawatt solar-thermal plant will be built in Santa Teresa,  New Mexico is the latest announced renewable energy project slated for construction in Dona Ana County.   According to articles in the Las Cruces Sun-News and the Las Cruces Bulletin, the plant will be located near the Santa Teresa Port of Entry and Verde Corporate Realty’s industrial parks in Santa Teresa. The plant will use technology developed by eSolar, a California company El Paso Electric picked to develop a solar project for the utility.

The solar project announcement follows an announcement by R-Qubed Energy that it plans to build a $75 million biogas plant between Vado and Berino. The plant will convert cow manure from the local dairies into methane gas. The gas will be sold to PNM. Other by-products from the plant will include fertilizer, compost and recycled effluent water for re-use on farms. The announcement was one of the front-page stories in the June 5 edition of the New Mexico Business Weekly. Sapphire Energy’s $100 million investment in green crude from algae was also covered on the front-page of the edition.