850MW Tessera/Stirling Project Gets First Regulatory Thumbs Up

Bloomberg New Energy Finance : April 01 2010

Tessera Solar and Stirling Energy Systems’ proposed 850MW Calico solar thermal electrical generation project in southern California has cleared an early regulatory hurdle after receiving a generally positive review from state officials.

Staff of the California Energy Commission (CEC), in conjunction with the US Bureau of Land Management, said in a recent assessment and draft environmental impact statement that the project would comply with relevant laws, so long as the developer took certain steps to mitigate environmental impact. Staff found that only land use, recreation and visual resources would be significantly impacted by the project, though these impacts would be unmitigable.

Calico is being developed by Arizona-based Tessera, which builds projects using Stirling devices. Both Tessera and SES are backed by Irish investment group NTR. The project, which would be located in San Bernardino County, formally changed its name from Solar One in January 2010 and would consist of two phases. The first would include 11,000 of SES’ 25kW Stirling engine parabolic dish “SunCatchers” to produce 275MW. Phase II would include an additional 23,000 SunCatchers to produce an additional 575MW for the total 850MW planned production.

Edison International’s (NYSE: EIX) San Diego-based utility Southern California Edison signed a 20-year power purchase agreement in April 2008 for the entire output from both phases of the project.

In January 2010, Tessera said that completion of the permitting process is targeted for September 2010. If fully approved, project construction would begin in late 2010, with full construction completed by mid-2014. However, because power would be available to the grid as each 60-unit group of SunCatchers is completed, commercial operations could commence as early as mid-2013.