Florida Power & Light begins construction on $476-million solar thermal station

03 December 2008

The Sunshine State of Florida is starting to live up to its name on the energy front. Today Florida Power & Light, the American state's biggest utility, started construction on what it says will be the first utility-scale solar investment in the state - and the second-largest of its kind in the country when it is fully turned on in 2010.

The facility, which is expected to enter service in 2010, will combine solar-thermal with a combined-cycle natural gas-fired power plant to use less fossil fuel when heat from the sun is available to produce steam needed to generate electricity.

It will consist of about 180,000 mirrors over roughly 500 acres at FPL's existing 3,657 MW Martin natural gas/oil-fired power station in Martin County. Martin County is about 100 miles north of Miami.

FPL said the $476 million solar-thermal station should provide enough power to serve about 11,000 homes, while preventing the emissions of more than 2.75 million tons of greenhouse gases, which is the equivalent of removing more than 18,700 cars from the road every year for the life of the project, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Projects like this will ''not only do good things for the environment, but drive costs of renewable power down,'' said Lew Hay, chairman and CEO of FPL. He explained that the innovative solar-natural gas hybrid system made economic sense since the turbines can still be put to work even when the sun isn't shining - but pulling it off required ''a fair amount of engineering.''

Another challenge, he added, was ''building it in such a way that it could withstand winds of a tropical storm or hurricane.'' The plant is the first of three solar facilities that FPL is constructing in Florida, which the utility says will make the state the second-largest solar energy producer in the US. California is currently the largest.