Recent weeks have seen plans to build two large solar thermal projects come to a disappointing end. Last week BrightSource abandoned its 5,130 acre project in the Mojave Desert. And news is just coming out that Starwood Energy Group has terminated the PPA it was recently awarded by APS for a 290MW solar thermal plant in Harquahala Valley, Arizona.
The two projects were cancelled for different reasons. BrightSource's project ran afoul of environmental efforts to protect Mojave desert lands and local wildlife. Starwood's project was apparently cancelled because Lockheed Martin (the project's EPC partner) concluded the risk and cost of the project were too great.
The cancellations highlight an important reality that will become more and more apparent over the next few years. Power project development is difficult and until all the uncertainties associated with land use, interconnection, construction cost, and power sales are resolved, a project is at risk of getting derailed. The unfortunate truth is that we are inevitably going to see attrition of more projects like these as development uncertainties take their toll.
From a renewable energy standpoint, this underscores the risk we face as a society in meeting RPS goals if we bet the farm on a handful of big projects. Don't get me wrong, the big projects are important and we need them in the mix if we're going to hit our goals. But, the reality is that big projects face more environmental scrutiny and interconnection issues than smaller distributed-scale projects. And because of the complexities involved, they take much longer to get to the point where the project is a sure thing.
A more robust policy approach to meeting RPS goals is to place bets on a diversified portfolio of large and small scale projects. Distributed-scale projects (2-20MW) can still be delivered in large volumes. My company, Recurrent Energy, is pursuing a distributed scale development strategy and our pipeline of over 500MW of projects demonstrates that small scale doesn't have to mean small capacity.
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