Southern California utilities eye Inland desert as energy goldmine

By LESLIE BERKMAN
The Press-Enterprise




Inland Southern California's desert backyard is ground zero in the state's efforts to cut back on polluting fossil-fuel-burning power plants and lead the nation's conversion to renewable energy.

For decades the region has been recognized for its rich renewable resources, from wind in the Coachella Valley and Tehachapi Mountains to the Salton Sea's underground reservoir of geothermal power to some of the most intense desert sunshine in the world.

Spurred by a state-imposed renewable energy requirement, now all of the major utilities in California -- Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas and Electric and San Diego Gas and Electric -- are scrambling to sign contracts to purchase electricity from new projects planned in the Imperial Valley and Mojave Desert.

"Because the California desert, particularly the Mojave Desert, is such a great place to develop solar and because of the proximity of large urban areas, there is probably more solar development going on in Southern California than anywhere else in the world," said Terry O'Brien, the California Energy Commission's deputy director of siting, transmission and environmental protection.

The task of transforming the state's energy structure to accommodate renewable power is huge and can't be done quickly. "We are transforming the electricity system in a way that hasn't been done before," said O'Brien.

Renewable energy provides about 12 percent of California's energy needs. State officials do not expect that investor-owned utilities will meet a legislated mandate to supply 20 percent of their customers' power needs with renewable energy by 2010.

"We should get close in 2012," said Dave Hawkins, lead renewable power engineer for the Independent Systems Operator, the agency responsible for maintaining the reliability of the state's energy grid.

Still, the push to renewable energy is intensifying with a state and national campaign to fight global warming and forge energy independence from foreign oil producers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order calling for 33 percent renewable energy in California by 2020 and said he will sponsor legislation to make that target a legal requirement for public and private utilities.

Currently, municipal utilities are exempt from the state renewable energy portfolio mandate and have set their own goals.

Andy Horne, Imperial County's deputy chief executive for natural resources development, hopes jobs generated by a burst of renewable energy development will trim that county's 23 percent unemployment.

Horne said in the past he has seen corporate interest in renewable energy investment track with oil prices. Rising oil prices kindled interest in renewable energy that quickly dimmed when oil prices fell, making renewables less competitive with conventional coal and gas generation.

But this time as oil prices fall, the interest in renewable generation is holding strong because utilities must continue buying to comply with the law. "I think this is a different ball game," Horne said.

Economic Constraints

Meeting a 33 percent renewable goal by 2020 will require adding 20,000 megawatts of renewable power to the state grid -- enough to supply about 15 million homes.

That calls for the construction of $60 billion in generation facilities and $6 billion in new transmission, more than half of that in Southern California, said Dave Olsen, coordinator of the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative

Olsen said that task force of stakeholders, including state regulatory agencies, the energy industry and the Sierra Club, is determining the most effective and least environmentally destructive places to locate renewable energy-generation projects and the transmission lines to serve them.

Environmental concerns about protecting the desert are making it difficult to get these projects built. Also a freeze in the financial markets already has prevented at least one geothermal company from obtaining capital to start construction on an approved project in the Imperial Valley.

"The economy is working against what we are trying to do," said Robert M. Doyel, lands branch chief with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Many Applicants

California is fielding a deluge of renewable-energy proposals. The federal Bureau of Land Management has 154 applications from prospective solar, wind and geothermal power developers requesting access to almost 1.5 million acres in its California Desert District that includes parts of San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial, San Diego and Kern counties.

Not all the applications will become operating power plants. Greg Miller, the bureau's renewable-energy program manager for that district, said many wind companies want only to test the resource.

Miller said besides, the process of getting approval is so daunting that it is likely some applicants will give up. Part of the delay, he said, stems from the bureau's inexperience with vetting solar projects planned for federal lands.

"Because solar energy development on BLM land is so new, there are many issues cropping up that we have to address on the fly," he said. The myriad of issues, he said, range from the impact on desert tortoises to potential desert erosion. Also, he said the bureau is not staffed to deal with the flood of applications.

In an effort to weed out speculators, the Independent System Operator late last year required a hefty deposit from applicants waiting for transmission connection -- with the result that about half the projects dropped out.

Simplifying Steps

The governor and state legislators are trying to speed the development of renewable-energy projects by consolidating the approval process, which is now fragmented among numerous state, federal and local government agencies.

"Simply setting a goal isn't sufficient unless we aggressively remove barriers to siting and transmission and actively encourage the industry here in California," said State Assemblyman Paul Krekorian, D-Burbank.

Krekorian is co-sponsor of Assembly Bill 64, which would, among other things, establish a single state agency in charge of approving renewable-energy generation and transmission projects.

Schwarzenegger in November ordered state agencies to work together in reviewing renewable-energy projects. He also signed a memorandum of agreement with the federal Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for state and federal agencies to jointly streamline the approval process for such projects in the Mojave and Colorado deserts.

Transmission arguably remains the biggest obstacle to the development of renewable energy because of the need to carry electricity many miles from remote areas where it is produced to population centers.

Larry Grogan, a former Imperial County supervisor and longtime energy industry consultant, said "the first ones (renewable projects) with resources and financing will get onto the transmission lines and the rest will have to wait."

O'Brien of the California Energy Commission said clearly more lines will have to be built for all the new generation planned by 2020.

Sunrise PowerLink, a $1.9 billion, 120-mile transmission line designed to bring wind, geothermal and solar power from the Imperial Valley to San Diego won approval last month from the Public Utilities Commission after a three-year struggle by the developer, San Diego Gas & Electric.

That transmission line was approved after it was rerouted around a state park. It is expected to go into operation in 2012.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also faces opposition to its plans to route transmission from the Imperial Valley to Los Angeles.

Geothermal Gem

"In my opinion, Imperial County will be the renewable capital of the country," said Vince Signorotti, vice president of land management for Terra-Gen, a renewable-energy development company looking for solar and geothermal sites in the area.

The Imperial Valley's most valuable resource, the experts say, is a rich underground reservoir of hot water near the Salton Sea. Steam extracted from briny water is pushed through turbines to produce electricity.

Currently about 400 megawatts of geothermal electricity is produced in the Imperial Valley and an estimated 2,000 megawatts of additional power remains to be tapped.

Mark T. Gran, vice president of Cal Energy, the largest geothermal plant operator in the Imperial Valley, said in anticipation of the new transmission the company plans to double its current geothermal energy production at the Salton Sea, building an additional 50-megawatt plant each year for the next dozen years.

Southern California Edison is a major customer of geothermal energy produced at the Salton Sea. The company is also building a $2 billion transmission project, with anticipated completion in 2013, to spur development of up to 4,500 megawatts of wind power in the Tehachapi region.

Southern California Edison Vice President Stu Hemphill said the company is relying on a provision in the state mandate that allows utilities that can't deliver 20 percent renewable energy to its customers next year to make up the shortfall by contracting to buy power from projects still on the drawing board.

"The question is how many of them will actually deliver and when," Hemphill said.

Lancaster sees solar as salvation

The city and surrounding Antelope Valley have been hard hit by poverty, unemployment and foreclosures. The nearly complete eSolar facility could create jobs and restore a sense of pride.

Workers install mirrors at an eSolar demonstration plant in Lancaster. The city hopes the company will provide jobs for Antelope Valley residents.Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times

By Scott Gold, Los Angeles Times
By Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires

SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- Plans to develop a large solar-thermal power plant in California moved a step closer Thursday after state regulators approved a contract between Edison International (EIX) unit Southern California Edison and plant developer eSolar.

In June, Edison signed a 20-year contract with eSolar Inc. to take the output from a series of concentrating solar power plants eSolar plans to build that would produce up to 245 megawatts of electricity. Approval by the California Public Utilities Commission allows Edison to recover the costs of the contract from its customers.

The solar facility, to be built in Kern County, Calif., will use concentrating solar power technology developed by eSolar. The technology has yet to generate electricity at a commercial scale, although eSolar is building a demonstration project. ESolar, a startup based in Pasadena, Calif., has secured the land needed for the project and lined up financing from Google.org, Idealab and Oak Investment Partners, according to the CPUC.

The price of the power from eSolar's facility is considered above-market, and Edison received commission approval to use special funds collected from utility customers to cover the extra amount.

The solar plant will interconnect with the Southern California grid at a new substation that Edison plans to build as part of the Tehachapi renewable transmission project.

Tehachapi residents remember the depot

BY JOE BOESEN
staff writer
Bakersfield Californian



Tehachapi Train Depot in 1904.


After 104 years of service, it only took hours for the Historic Tehachapi Train Depot to come crashing down.

The old structure was engulfed in flames after fireworks, lit off late at night, started the inferno.

The depot was the second. The first built in 1876 and burnt down in 1904.

However for more than a century, it stood in the center of Tehachapi, acting as its lifeline, especially in the early days before highways went through Tehachapi. The 1952 earthquake flattened many of the historic buildings in town, but failed to damage the depot. Even when passenger service stopped in 1971, the depot survived and transformed. It continued to be used as office space for the Southern Pacific Railroad Company.

It took only fireworks to burn down a part of Tehachapi history, erase a visible part of American railroad history and shake the core of Tehachapi downtown.

DEPOT MEMORIES

Lydia Wheat, moved to Tehachapi in 1925. She remembers the historic depot as “just the depot.” She would board trains there and head into east Bakersfield for lunch and shopping before returning to Tehachapi.

“In the 1940s it was the only transportation we had,” she said. To send mail, Wheat said she would go to the depot.

“You could run and give the letter to the conductor and they would see that it would get out,” she said. “It was pretty nice.”

Growing up across the street from railroad tracks, Wheat said trains used to pass through the depot every three or four minutes.

“The first couple of nights we moved to town, we could not sleep,” she said. “Now they do not bother me in the least.”

“I was very sad to see it go,” Wheat said of the now destroyed depot.

BEST PLACE TO PLAY

As the son of an alfalfa farmer, Ed Grimes would always accompany his dad on trips to downtown Tehachapi for supplies and equipment repairs. The train depot was always the best place to play.

“There were so many places to hide,” Grimes said.

Walking into the depot, Grimes remembered smelling the wafting scent of cigars.

“It has always been so vivid in my mind,” he said. Outside the depot, all the old measuring scales piled up and the old equipment provided a “neat place for a boy to play.”

When he saw the depot on fire, he said he was so emotionally distraught he didn’t realize the tears running down his face.

URGE TO RESTORE

Doug Pickard became concerned with the deteriorating condition of the depot when he realized the railroad company, now the Union Pacific, was not going “to spend a dime on it.”

The Union Pacific, which bought out the Southern Pacific in 1995, was using the building as an office for its maintenance workers.

Although Pickard has a relatively short history in Tehachapi (living there for only 14 years), he became emotionally attached to restoring the old depot to its former glory.

“It was a strong personal desire to restore that depot late in my life,” he said. As he researched the history of the depot, it grew on him. He formed the Friends of the Tehachapi Depot in 2004, a small group of enthusiasts pushing for restoration.

The City of Tehachapi achieved a major milestone in 2006 when Union Pacific agreed to exchange the depot if the city built another building for its workers.

After an October key exchange ceremony, volunteers officially could begin restoration of the depot, which Pickard estimates was 95 percent complete when it burned down last Friday. In less than three years of work, he said it was fully repainted, new windows and the heating system were installed and even the sprinkler system was set up.

Fortunately, they were not finished — historic artifacts to be displayed in the museum weren’t inside yet.

“Then it would have been a much greater loss,” Pickard said.

ALMOST A MUSEUM

Where Pickard struggled for ten years to restore the depot, Dell Troy struggled for 35 years to rehab the old depot. As a resident of Tehachapi for 50 years, she began to push for a museum at the depot in 1973, two years after passenger service stopped.

“In the fall of 1972, there was a rumor that it would be sold and made into a restaurant,” she said.

She and several others formed the Tehachapi Heritage League to save the depot from becoming a restaurant. The Southern Pacific Railroad Company later said it would not sell the building.

From then on Troy said there was a tuggle war between the people of Tehachapi and the railroad company, which continually refused to allow restoration of the building.

“The answer was always no,” she said. When ownership changed to the Union Pacific, Tehachapi residents were able to start restoration on their favorite building.

She said the love affair residents have with the depot is rooted in history.

“I think everyone put so much love into the depot because they lost practically all of the downtown in the 1952 earthquake,” she said. “It’s 104 years of history gone.”

What’s next for the depot?

The Tehachapi City Council voted unimously on June 16 to rebuild the depot, said City Councilman Ed Grimes.

“We gave directions to the city manager to start building as soon as the investigation is complete,” said Grimes.

Insurance, a building donation fund and redevelopment funds will cover the cost of rebuilding the depot. Grimes said residents have already donated $13,000 to the building doantion fund.

Although it is still unclear when the construction will begin, the city will try to have the depot ready for Tehachapi’s 100 year anniversary in August 2009.

Authorities delay arrest of two in Tehachapi depot blaze

The Bakersfield Californian

A two-alarm fire ripped through a historic Tehachapi train depot Friday morning, causing more than $1 million in damage and leaving a community distraught. Photo by Nick Smirnoff / Special to The Californian

TEHACHAPI — Police have identified two men from Tehachapi, aged 36 and 31, as the two suspects who allegedly caused the Tehachapi train depot fire last week.

The suspects have not been arrested because police are waiting for the Kern County District Attorney’s office to file a complaint against them, police said in a news conference Wednesday afternoon held in front of the charred ruins of the train depot.

The two men were approached individually Monday afternoon by Tehachapi police and in subsequent questioning, along with evidence from the burnt train depot, police believe they caused the fire.

“They were cooperative,” said Tehachapi Police Chief Jeff Kermode. “There was no resistance in the lengthy interview.”

Kermode said the men will not be arrested until the Kern County Fire Department arson investigators present the case to the District Attorney’s office.

The first man contacted “expressed great remorse over the outcome and great fear over the consequences,” Kermode said.

The second man did not show much remorse, he said.

He said the men were not a flight risk because they both had jobs in Tehachapi, one raising a family there.

The arson investigators were expected to present their case to the District Attorney’s office either Wednesday or today, said Phil Castle, Kern County Deputy Fire Chief.

Investigators found that fireworks, which are illegal in mountain areas like Tehachapi, caused the fire. Police said the two men had also been drinking that night.

“Alcohol and illegal fireworks are not a good combination,” Kermode said.

Arson investigators began by consulting with builders who were rehabbing the old train depot, which was to become a museum, to find out if a construction accident was to blame.

Police were tipped off that two men were lighting off fireworks at about 9 p.m. that night. A squad car patrolled the area and the two men left, but they returned around 2 a.m. to light the rest of their fireworks, police said. The fire began shortly after 3 a.m.

Police said they received a tip Saturday stating remnants of fireworks could be found along nearby railroad tracks. The police found and collected those remnants. Those clues led them to the two men. They could be charged with felony arson and felony possession of fireworks.

Shortly before the fire, a new extinguisher system had been installed as part of the depot’s renovation. The water line had not yet been set up.

During the fire, which lasted several hours, at least one propane tank was ruptured by the heat, causing a blast that broke windows in nearby stores.

The news conference drew both media and a crowd of residents, who gathered on the sidewalk in front of the burnt Historic Tehachapi Train Depot. City dignitaries including Mayor Deborah Hand and Councilman Ed Grimes expressed their sorrow over losing the landmark, but promised to rebuild.

“We can rebuild the building but the old wood smells won’t be there,” she said. “It’s a deep feeling of loss.”

As a kid, Grimes used to play hide-and-go-seek in the old building. Tears ran down his face when he watched the building burn.

“To see it all go up in smoke really got to me,” he said.

L.A.breaks ground on largest city-owned wind farm

U.S. Department of Energy





Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the city's Department of Water and Power (DWP) broke ground January 31 at the site of the Pine Tree Wind Farm in the Tehachapi Mountains, roughly 100 miles northwest of the city. The $425 million project is expected to be completed in 2009 and to deliver 120 megawatts (MW) of electricity to Los Angeles, enough to power 56,000 homes.

Villaraigosa says Pine Tree will be the largest municipally owned and municipally operated wind farm in the nation. In comparison, the second largest city-owned wind farm, Sacramento Municipal Utility District's Solano County project, outsources its operations to a third party.

Pine Tree will comprise 80 1.5-MW wind turbines on its 8,000-acre site, feeding electricity into a new high-voltage transmission line, and the new Barren Ridge electrical substation.

Construction is expected to generate hundreds of contract jobs, in addition to 12 full-time jobs for the project's long-term maintenance.

The energy produced at Pine Tree is expected to displace 200,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, or the equivalent of taking 35,000 cars off the road. It is also expected to cut 8 tons of nitrous oxide and 11 tons of carbon monoxide. The project will bring Los Angeles closer to its goal of producing 20 percent of its energy from renewables by 2010 — and 35 percent by 2020 — while cutting the city's carbon footprint.

"Pine Tree is the start of a new model of clean energy, in which the City of Los Angeles is no longer satisfied with only buying clean power, but is taking the lead nationally in producing its own," Villaraigosa said.

Villaraigosa also announced plans to develop the Pine Canyon Wind Project on 12,000 acres of recently purchased property adjacent to the Pine Tree project. When completed, the 150-MW wind farm will surpass Pine Tree as the largest wind farm in the nation.

Last May, Villaraigosa announced GREEN LA – An Action Plan to Lead the Nation in Fighting Global Warming. The plan is composed of 50 initiatives that aim to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions 35 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, going beyond the targets of the Kyoto Protocol.

Power plant proposed

Mojave Desert considered for world's biggest solar station

San Bernardino Sun

Andrew Silva, Staff Writer

The largest solar power plant in the world has been proposed for the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, it was announced Wednesday.

Pacific Gas & Electric reached a deal to buy power from Israel-based Solel Solar Systems, which plans to build a $2 billon plant covering nine square miles. It could be operating by 2011.

The plant would generate 533 megawatts of power, enough to power 400,000 homes.
In contrast, Southern California Edison's 2-year-old Mountainview Power Plant in Redlands generates 1,054 megawatts.

Solel is looking at three locations for the plant. One is north of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, another is northwest of Needles, and the third is near the Nevada border between the 15 Freeway and the 40 Freeway.

Company officials hope to make a final decision on a location after an environmental review late next year or early 2009, said Vanessa Loftus, a spokeswoman for Solel.

Two sites are on land administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the third is on private land, she said.

PG&E doesn't serve this area, so power generated would go to customers from Bakersfield to the north.

The technology would be the same as that at the solar generating station at Kramer Junction, the intersection of Highway 58 and Highway 395.

Rows of curved mirrors, called troughs, concentrate the sun's energy onto a pipe carrying a liquid that can reach temperatures high enough to boil water.

For more than two decades, San Bernardino County has been the testing ground for large-scale solar projects.

Plants at Kramer Junction and Harper Dry Lake produce more than 300 megawatts of power on about 2,000 acres. Southern California Edison buys all the power from those plants.

The new solar plant would help California meet its target of getting 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2010.

SCE is also aggressively pursuing contracts to buy renewable power, said Stuart Hemphill, director of renewable and alternative power.

The company recently signed a contract for 1,500 megawatts of new wind power in the Tehachapi Mountains.

A number of companies are looking to produce new clean power with California leading the way on renewable energy and its mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"There's a tremendous influx of venture capital," Hemphill said.

Though the proposed locations for the new solar plant are remote, PG&E can tap into existing transmission lines that served the coal-fired Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nev.

That plant shut down at the end of 2005 after years of controversy over its effect on the air in Grand Canyon National Park.

Solar plants are appropriate for this desert area because during hot summer days, up to half the electricity consumed is used for powering air conditioning units, Loftus said.