Florida Power & Light Breaks Ground on World's First Hybrid Solar Plant
When it goes online in 2010, Florida Power & Light Company's hybrid plant will also be the second largest solar energy facility in the world and is expected to provide 75 megawatts of solar thermal capacity while directly displacing fossil fuel use, the utility said.
The Florida Power & Light Company broke ground yesterday on the world's first hybrid solar energy power plant.
When it goes online in 2010, the hybrid plant will also be the second largest solar energy facility in the world, become the largest outside California and provide an estimated 75 megawatts of solar thermal capacity while directly displacing fossil fuel usage, the utility said.
The facility, called the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center, is being built at the utility's existing natural-gas/oil-fired 3,657-megawatt Martin power plant. The plant is near Indiantown in Martin County, roughly 100 miles north of Miami.
Once complete, the new facility will pair a solar-thermal field with a combined-cycle natural gas power plant. Together, they're expected to use less fossil fuel when the sun is out while helping to produce steam to generate electricity.
The solar portion of the combined facility is to feature some 180,000 collectors with mirrored surfaces spread over 500 acres. The technology works this way: The mirrors reflect the sun onto receivers to heat liquid creating steam that in turn produces electricity whenever the sun is shining.
The utility projects that the new facility will produce about 155,000 MWh of electricity a year — about enough to power almost 11,000 households in its service area. FPL also estimates that the facility will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.75 million tons across a 30-year period.
The Martin project is the largest of three of the solar facilities the utility is building in the state. All told the facilities are expected to produce 110 megawatts of emissions-free energy when operational. The other Florida projects are at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and in Desoto County.
In addition to becoming the operator of the second largest solar plant in the world, the utility already lays claim to operating the world's largest solar-thermal plant: the 310-megawatt Solar Electric Generating System in the world in California's Mojave Desert.
The utility says its capacity to produce solar power coupled with its production of renewable energy from the wind make FPL the U.S. front-runner in the renewable energy field. The utility has 58 wind power projects in 16 states with a capacity of more than 5,800 megawatts of electricity.
In California on Monday, Southern California Edison celebrated the completion of the largest rooftop solar installation in its state. The solar power array of two square miles of panels are expected to produce 250 megawatts of peak capacity — enough power for 1,300 homes.
Just a week earlier, the Northern California Solar Energy Association released a report charting the growth of solar installations in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
More than 60 percent of the country's solar installations are in the Golden State, and the number of the installations has grown 30 to 40 percent annually for the past several years, Molly Tirpak Sterkel of the California Public Utilities Commission said in her forward to the report, which is available here.
When it goes online in 2010, the hybrid plant will also be the second largest solar energy facility in the world, become the largest outside California and provide an estimated 75 megawatts of solar thermal capacity while directly displacing fossil fuel usage, the utility said.
The facility, called the Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center, is being built at the utility's existing natural-gas/oil-fired 3,657-megawatt Martin power plant. The plant is near Indiantown in Martin County, roughly 100 miles north of Miami.
Once complete, the new facility will pair a solar-thermal field with a combined-cycle natural gas power plant. Together, they're expected to use less fossil fuel when the sun is out while helping to produce steam to generate electricity.
The solar portion of the combined facility is to feature some 180,000 collectors with mirrored surfaces spread over 500 acres. The technology works this way: The mirrors reflect the sun onto receivers to heat liquid creating steam that in turn produces electricity whenever the sun is shining.
The utility projects that the new facility will produce about 155,000 MWh of electricity a year — about enough to power almost 11,000 households in its service area. FPL also estimates that the facility will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2.75 million tons across a 30-year period.
The Martin project is the largest of three of the solar facilities the utility is building in the state. All told the facilities are expected to produce 110 megawatts of emissions-free energy when operational. The other Florida projects are at NASA's Kennedy Space Center and in Desoto County.
In addition to becoming the operator of the second largest solar plant in the world, the utility already lays claim to operating the world's largest solar-thermal plant: the 310-megawatt Solar Electric Generating System in the world in California's Mojave Desert.
The utility says its capacity to produce solar power coupled with its production of renewable energy from the wind make FPL the U.S. front-runner in the renewable energy field. The utility has 58 wind power projects in 16 states with a capacity of more than 5,800 megawatts of electricity.
In California on Monday, Southern California Edison celebrated the completion of the largest rooftop solar installation in its state. The solar power array of two square miles of panels are expected to produce 250 megawatts of peak capacity — enough power for 1,300 homes.
Just a week earlier, the Northern California Solar Energy Association released a report charting the growth of solar installations in the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
More than 60 percent of the country's solar installations are in the Golden State, and the number of the installations has grown 30 to 40 percent annually for the past several years, Molly Tirpak Sterkel of the California Public Utilities Commission said in her forward to the report, which is available here.
