BrightSource Energy Sounds Off on the Realities of U.S. Energy Policy

By Eric Wesoff

BrightSource Energy is one of the more interesting and successful solar startups of the last few years, and we’ve covered them extensively at Greentech Media.  (They’re actually the revived Luz, a pioneering Israeli solar thermal company, but it was the recent VC funding and support that helped get them back on track.)

• The company is one of our top ten startups.

• We’ve covered BrightSource’s brilliant success in winning a huge PG&E contract.

• We’ve covered the company’s recent $115 million VC funding round.

• And here’s a link to news of BrightSource’s opening of a Solar Energy Development Center in Israel, an operational solar field that will lets the company test equipment and materials as well as construction and operating methods.

BrightSource is a solar thermal company that uses a heliostat field/power tower architecture (as opposed to a parabolic trough or Stirling engine design). Like any solar thermal technology driving a steam turbine they need direct uninterrupted sunshine preferably at altitude, access to water, and access to transmission lines.

Charles Ricker, BrightSource’s Senior VP spoke at the Palo Alto Research Center [PARC] last Wednesday night at an SVPVS event and provided some facts and figures about the firm:

• Their smaller heliostat mirrors made from flat, white glass, by virtue of their size, requires just a 6” diameter pipe driven into the ground as a mount, rather than lots of concrete and steel.

• They anticipate an uptime of about 350 days per year.

• Historically, mirror loss from the elements is less than 0.3 percent.

• It takes eight acres to produce 1MW.

• Concentration is 500 suns.

• They have about 30 FT employees in their Oakland, Calif. offices and about 80 FT employees at their Luz II subsidiary in Israel.

• Vantage Point Venture Partners “dramatically increased their ownership share in the recent C round.”

Mr. Ricker then went on to witheringly describe how the U.S.’s lack of a cohesive energy policy effectively defines our energy policy.

The Reality of the Current U.S. Energy Policy, According to Mr. Ricker

Every day:

• We buy 20 million barrels of oil

• We borrow $2 billion from competitive countries (e.g., China)

• We pay $2 billion to unfriendly countries (e.g., Russia)

• We consume everything we’ve bought

This results in our:

• Owing $2 billion we don’t know how to repay

• Incurring $10 million of additional recurring interest

Every year we borrow $750 billion to buy oil, which is:

• Equivalent to 1.5 times the U.S. military budget

• Equivalent to 1.5 times the annual cost of Social Security

• Equivalent to 2 times the annual cost of medicine

All the RNC chants of “Drill Baby Drill” won’t change that reality. We need more renewables online and we need a lot more companies like BrightSource.

Comments

[my2bits:]

Our future economy and our competitive position in the world will depend on inexpensive and abundant energy. Energy is the basis of all of the world’s economies.

The country that has the lowest cost of clean energy will have a significant leg up in the future world economy.

The primary source of energy for most of the economies in the world today is oil, coal and natural gas. These are commodities that are purchased on a worldwide market. We all pay the going rate and therefore we all have the same basic cost of energy.

We are currently faced with peak oil. In the next few years our existing oil will diminish and demand will increase. Supply and demand dictates that the world wide price of oil will continue to escalate.

A new paradigm for worldwide economic competition:
The country that has the lowest cost of energy will be able to supply goods and services to the world for a lower cost or a higher profit margin. This would also mean a higher standard of living and a more robust economy for a country that has the lowest cost of clean energy.

Sufficient amounts of clean energy, will probably necessitate constructing multiple large nuclear power plants. Wind, solar, geothermal, tide and wave power are all great and will probably not be enough to meet the realistic demands of our economy.
Basically we need to:
• Add a carbon tax or cap and trade system that will sufficiently add to the cost of those who pollute. Use the revenue from this tax to subsidize alternative energy.
• Carbon and pollution cost will also need to be added to imported goods.
• Fast track the construction of nuclear power plants and utilize the technology that will transfer large amounts of power for long distances with little or no line loss.
• Add a tax to gasoline that will gradually increase, on a timescale, to a very significant amount. This tax money will go into a fund that can only be used to subsidize the purchase of the cleanest most gasoline efficient cars.

The abundant power of the nuclear plants can also be used to generate hydrogen gas. The hydrogen gas can be used in many ways; a substitute for gasoline, diesel, home heating, etc.

The gasoline tax and subsidy for the purchase of small clean cars will dramatically change the cars that are produced. The manufacturers will be scrambling to create the cars that receive the greatest percentage of the subsidy. Theoretically one could buy the equivalent of a Toyota Prius and have the government pay for one half or more.

These are drastic economy shaking ideas.

The reality of our needing to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil and the immediate and real threat of catastrophic climate change, justify and demand drastic changes.

Creating our new energy environment, and fast tracking these changes, will invigorate our present economy. Fast tracking means, environmental impact report not needed and a moratorium on lawsuits. The environmental impact of the status quo is obvious.


















nter your comment here

2008 Sep 17 09:13 PM

[john s. gordon:]

let's have more superconducting dc transmission
> jack

2008 Sep 18 08:22 AM

[nakedjaybird:]

Come on Dems, shove the drills where they belong!!!!

2008 Sep 18 11:23 AM

[nakedjaybird:]

Hogwash, hogwash.

Tax gasoline and diesel at $5/gal right up front, permanenly!! (It is amazing what even $2 tax would do - but let's provide the real emphasis, as if it were an embargo only the fuel is still available).

Tax diminishes as consumption declines.

Tax gets applied to:

1) ELECTRIFYING the existing RAILROADS (eliminate the diesel in diesel-electric; and no, don't convert ANY engines to NG) and,

2) building ELECTRIED inter/intrastate FERRIES in/alongside/above the existing right-of-ways, which is also where the BEEFED-UP ELECTRICAL GRID also belongs, and which will be close enough to connect nearby solar and wind farm power and take the power from the countryside to every major city, DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Now that's good policy AND PLAN.

2008 Sep 18 11:41 AM

[nakedjaybird:]

And 3), so that you don't forget the best HYBRID - push the home-grown biofuel injected burner (with no moving parts) encapsulated with solid-state direct conversion to electric waste heat devices (which capture 80-90% of the energy) powering the 20-40 hp ChorusMotor with the only onboard storage device being the 5 GALLON GRASS TANK which we fill at 1/3 of the existing fueling stations because we get 3-4x the current fuel economy (while we subsidize the homegrown biofuel industry by using the existing $billions of subsidies given to farmers to do NOTHING with their land in CRP programs).

Now, there's win-win-win: energy independence by taking 21 mbd crude to ___ (doesn't matter, because as soon as our consuption drops more than 1 mbd the world will be awash in crude. Flooded, all the way to ZERO BURNING of hydrocarbons, for the right reason, not the liberal greenie reason.

2008 Sep 18 12:00 PM

[Road Runner:]

My bet for solar concentrating companies is Ausra (sorry not yet public - 2010). My guess is that they will beat BrightSource Energy on cost. They are taking the tried and true trough concentrating technology and simplifying it to cut the cost in half. The mirrors are flat, thus much cheaper, and lower to the ground, thus less steel mounting. Reading about them leads me to believe that they examined every aspect of the concentrating solar system and asked "how can we make this cheaper and better".

2008 Sep 19 02:31 PM