NTR launches Maricopa solar plant in Arizona

22 January 2010

International renewable energy group NTR has opened the Maricopa solar power plant in Phoenix, Arizona, in the first step towards developing 1,500MW of US solar projects in 2010.

The new plant features SunCatcher concentrating solar power technology designed and manufactured by Stirling Energy Systems (SES).

‘This is a significant milestone for our solar businesses,’ said Jim Barry, chief executive of NTR. ‘We are pleased that following our initial investment in April 2008, the hard work and commitment of the Tessera Solar and SES management teams has resulted in the first commercial scale SunCatcher generated solar power plant and the achievement of one of NTR’s key strategic investment goals. With this milestone now behind us, we look forward to breaking ground on our initial 1,500MW of projects in California and Texas later this year.’

SES’s SunCatcher was designed and developed in America, through a public-private partnership with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The company said the 60 SunCatcher dishes will provide 1.5MW to renewable energy utility Salt River Project customers in Greater Phoenix, Arizona. The solar dishes unveiled at Maricopa Solar were manufactured and assembled, mostly in Michigan, by automotive suppliers. The SES SunCatcher is a 25KW solar power system which uses a 38-foot mirrored parabolic dish combined with an automatic tracking system to collect and focus solar energy onto a Stirling engine to convert the solar thermal energy into grid-quality electricity.

SES said that high-volume manufacturing of its SunCatcher module begins in Summer 2010 and Tessera Solar breaks ground on utility-scale projects late this year in California and Texas.

Imperial Valley is a 750MW project with the first 300MW contracted under a power purchase agreement with San Diego Gas & Electric near El Centro, California. Calico is a 850MW project with Southern California Edison near Barstow, California and Western Ranch is a 27MW project with CPS Energy in West Texas.

NTR is the parent company of Tessera Solar and Stirling Energy Systems. Founded in 1978, international renewable energy group NTR builds and runs green energy businesses.

Stirling Energy Systems was founded in 1996 with corporate headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona, and engineering and test site operations at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Tessera Solar North America is headquartered in Houston, Texas, with offices in Scottsdale, Arizona and Berkeley, California. Tessera Solar International is headquartered in London, England.

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Tags: solar

This story was published on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 3:06 pm and is filed under North America, companies, solar. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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