Clean Energy Updates Take Power Plant for a Spin

With the steady shift by conventional, fossil fuel-based producers of energy towards greener methods, it's increasingly clear that momentum is steadily building behind a welcome set of changes. As The New York Times reports, a Florida Power and Light (FPL) facility near West Palm Beach is breaking new ground on multiple fronts.

For starters, there's the array of some 190,000 solar mirrors FPL is installing in building a solar plant that when completed will make it the world's second largest solar plant. But perhaps more interesting is the fact that FPL's new solar plant will not be a stand-alone facility. Instead, it is being integrated within an existing natural gas power plant that is itself the nation's largest fossil fuel-fired facility. FPL's initiative represents the first-of-its-kind fusion of solar with fossil fuel generation on a large industrial scale. Consider it the next step in the evolution of hybrid green technology.

As The Times reports, utilities across the nation are coming under increased pressure to step up their use of renewable energy and to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, economies of scale that would lower the costs of clean energy have not fully matured.

Further, while energy demands are steady and predictable, winds and clouds are not. In Texas in 2008, a close call with blackout conditions occurred as winds failed to show up for days, and similar challenges have appeared in Spain whose generation infrastructure has been modified to derive more than 10 percent of its electricity from wind.

But in grafting the novel onto the existing and conventional, FPL is banking on deriving some key benefits. The incorporation of the solar component will allow the utility to lessen their reliance on natural gas, most notably during the hot, sunny Florida summers when the air conditioners are more likely to be running full tilt. Alternately, retaining the operation of the natural gas component will permit the power to flow as needed in any instance when the sun and clouds don't cooperate.

FPL's experiment in utility hybridization is already being emulated elsewhere even before this pioneering approach is fully up and running. The Times indicates that plans are underway for solar hybridization of gas- and coal-fired plants in New Mexico, and a dozen projects similar to FPL's are under consideration elsewhere around the world.

Photo by Walter J. Pilsak via Wikimedia Commons.