CSP World

Dark clouds are surrounding the Palen Concentrated Solar Power project after the California Energy Commission staff has unveiled its proposed decision for the planned plant.

The committee in charge of the assessment of the Palen SEGS (Solar Energy Generation Station), promoted by BrightSource Energy and Abengoa, has released its proposed decision, where the staff finds that it will have "significant unmitigable impacts to cultural and visual resources".

The staff has assessed an amendment to a previously approved project filed by Solar Millenium to build a 500 MW parabolic trough plant. The amendment came after BrightSource bought the project when Solar Millenium went bankrupt and changed it to use central receiver (power tower) technology instead.

Unlike the currently approved project (the parabolic trough one),"the committee finds that the amended project will also result in significant and unmitigable impacts to biological resources due to the risk of solar flux on avian species", and therefore, "the committee recommends denying the project amendment at this time, finding that the totality of the project impacts outweighs the totality of the project benefits".

The committee assigned to the Palen project has scheduled a committee conference on January 7, 2014 in Sacramento, California.

The proposed decision is not a final decisions on the amendment. A 30 day public comment period is now open to consider input before the proposed decision go to the full Energy Commission in early 2014. Commissioner Karen Douglas presided while Commissioner David Hochschild served as associate member for the Palen Solar Electric Generating System amendment.

Palen Project

In December 2010, the Energy Commission approved the 500 MW Palen Solar Power Project, a solar thermal power project using parabolic trough technology. In December 2012, the new project owner, Palen Solar Holdings, LLC filed an amendment with the commission requesting to change the technology to solar power tower.

The applicant for the amended project now known as the Palen Solar Electric Generating System is Palen Solar Holdings, LLC, a joint venture of BrightSource Energy, Inc. and Abengoa.

The amendment proposal consists of two 250 -MW solar towers and 170,000 heliostats. Heliostats are elevated mirrors used to focus the sun's rays on a solar receiver that produces steam to generate electricity. The solar receiver would be located atop a 750-foot-tall power tower near the center of each solar field.

The Palen project would be located about 10 miles east of Desert Center, halfway between Indio and Blythe, in eastern Riverside County. It is located on 3,794 acres of public land managed by the BLM which is separately reviewing the project.

The Palen PMPD can be found here