NTR to build solar plant in Arizona

UTILITY COMPANY NTR plans to build its first large-scale solar power plant with the deployment of 60 SunCatcher machines in Arizona within five months.

The firm expects the 1.5 megawatt (MW) project to demonstrate the commercial viability of a system that uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy on to an engine which converts thermal energy to grid-quality electricity.

While the system developed by NTR’s Stirling Energy Systems (SES) unit boasts high power conversion efficiency and minimal water usage, the achievement of consistent manufacturing quality and efficiencies of scale will be a crucial test for the Arizona plant.

NTR declined to quantify the scale of its investment in the Maricopa solar farm, located at West Valley in the greater Phoenix area.

The project will be “a reference plant” for larger commercial projects in California and Texas with 1,600MW of power capacity.

Although each SunCatcher dish has been shown in tests to generate up to 25,000 watts, the business may have a requirement to build as many as 6,000 for a commercially viable development. SES has 10 working SunCatchers, but only four use the design that will be rolled out in the Maricopa project.

The project will be located next to the Agua Fria power plant in Peoria, Arizona, run by US utility group Salt River Project (SRP). NTR’s Tessera Solar unit will lease the land from SRP, which will buy the solar energy.

NTR spent $100 million (€70.15 million) last year to buy 51 per cent of SES, a deal that followed the sale of the West-Link bridge to the Government and the sale of its Airtricity windfarms to Eon and Scottish Southern Energy.

NTR has engaged investment banks Goldman Sachs and Standard Chartered Bank to advise on its preparations to return to the international capital markets next year to raise as much as $950 million to fund the development of its solar and wind energy projects.

The banks are advising how NTR could raise $250 million in equity for Stirling and debt of $250 million to fund the commercial development of the SunCatcher system.

NTR also has a controlling stake in Missouri-based wind farm company Wind Capital Group.