The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has issued a final environmental impact statement (FEIS) for the Blythe Solar Power Project, which is composed of four adjacent 250MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, totaling 1GW of generation capacity. Solar Millennium AG (Erlangen, Germany) and Chevron Energy Solutions (San Ramon, California, US) will jointly develop the plants, which when complete will occupy 9,400 acres of desert managed by the BLM in Southern California. The issuance of the FEIS begins a 30-day comment period, after which the BLM will make a final decision on the plant, which must also receive approval by the California Energy Commission (CEC) before construction can begin.

Blythe plant to drastically increase US CSP capacity

At 1GW, the four Blythe plants could drastically increase the United States' CSP capacity, as the nation currently only has 422MW of installed CSP. The Blythe project joins a host of other CSP projects, totaling 2.83GW, that the CEC will decide upon this fall.

The four identical Blythe plants will use parabolic trough technology, whereby long rows of curved mirrors concentrate sunlight on a central tube to heat a heat transfer fluid to 750 degrees Celsius, which then heats water vapor to run a turbine.

2010-09-01| Courtesy: US Bureau of Land Management; photo: Solar Millennium AG | solarserver.com © Heindl Server GmbH

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