Two Solar Power Tower Projects on the Agenda for Approval
EnviroMission Solar Tower Power Purchase Agreement With SCPPA Up For Approval
A Power Purchase Agreement for the sale of electricity from the proposed EnviroMission Arizona Solar Tower development to the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) has been placed on the agenda for approval at the next SCPPA board meeting on October 21, 2010.
EnviroMission was selected as the only suitable solar energy project at the time of EnviroMission’s successful submission to a 2008 SCPPA Request for Proposals (RFP). The 2008 SCPPA RFP sought suppliers of suitable renewable energy for SCPPA member utilities to meet their Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). SCPPA members have adopted a 33% mandate by 2020 to be generated from renewable energy. SCPPA is a California joint power authority consisting of eleven municipal utilities and one irrigation district.
SCPPA members deliver electricity to approximately two million customers over 7,000 square miles to a population of nearly five million people.
EnviroMission has been negotiating the sale of clean renewable electricity from the first of two planned 200 MW Solar Tower power stations in Arizona to SCPPA and its member utilities since qualifying as a ‘suitable renewable project‘ in 2009.
SCPPA board approval requires member utilities, identified as ‘Project Participants’ (end user utilities), to seek approval from their respective governing bodies to purchase agreed amounts of Solar Tower power from SCPPA via individual Power Sales Agreements (PSA) that will be met by the EnviroMission SCPPA Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).
Ratification of each PSA is a condition precedent to the SCPPA PPA with EnviroMission however all PPA negotiations were conducted in consultation with SCPPA member utilities with the objective of ‘satisfying a collective renewable energy appetite’ of a number of SCPPA member utilities through a single PPA executed between SCPPA and EnviroMission.
Development of Solar Towers in Arizona’s hot, arid west will create vital regional development opportunities from new green jobs and positive economic flow on benefits from power station construction and electricity generation in a region with water constraints that severely limit the development of large-scale water intensive power generation technologies including concentrated solar power (CSP), coal, gas and nuclear; Solar Tower power station technology does not use water in the electricity generation method.
“This much anticipated Power Purchase Agreement with SCPPA will provide a commercial outcome that will resonate ‘project viability’ once the economic basis of the PPA is able to be factored into the already compelling social and environmental case for Solar Tower power station development in the USA,” said EnviroMission’s Chief Executive, Roger C. Davey in Melbourne today.
“EnviroMission couldn’t be happier with the momentum and progress Solar Tower commercialization has taken since EnviroMission shifted the development priority to the USA.
“Whilst details of the SCPPA Power Purchase Agreement must remain confidential at this point in time, I take great pleasure being able to announce this very significant outcome from those negotiations,” Mr. Davey said.
www.enviromission.com.au
Tags: board approval, california solar towers, concentrated, concentrated solar, concentrated solar power, condition precedent, electricity generation, environment, environmental, Generation, governing bodies, irrigation district, member utilities, municipal utilities, power generation technologies, power purchase agreement, renewable electricity, renewable energy, renewable portfolio standard, request for proposals rfp, sales agreements, solar energy, solar energy project, solar power tower, solar power towers, solar projects in arizona, solar thermal towers, solar tower, SOLARTHERMAL, Southern California, thermal
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