This President is doing more to move the US away from foreign oil and fossil fueled electric generation than any before (except perhaps Carter.) This project reinforces the value of energy innovation from domestic resources.

Through the combination of new alternatives such as this and updated nuclear and conversion of coal to NG - US electric production will lower the "carbon footprint" and build energy independence rapidly. Clearly Mr. Obama sees the US leading the world in the transition away from old school energy models. Congratulations.

The solar resource map; http://www.azsolarcenter.org/images/articles/az/solmap.gif says this plant should collect about 7kwh/m2/day and near Gila Bend it's well placed near a number of high voltage transmission lines.

More to the point - from "conditional commitment" to "operational in 2011" is, at most, 18 months. Try getting a nuke online that fast.

Nuclear plants are expensive and take a while to create. If we have distributed storage in homes and buildings, we can make wind and solar output available 24/7. Along with combined cycle plants powered by renewable methane from landfill gasification, geothermal AND more efficient use, we will have plenty of power without radioactive waste for thousands of years.

If you went all renewable, ignoring the vast cost and the fact that it is entirely impractical and relies on burning vast amounts of fossil fuels to make up for it's never being available when it is needed, you would indeed have radioactive waste for thousands of years.
If nuclear power is deployed, not only would you have cheap energy, but reactors only slightly more advanced could use all the radioactive 'waste' aka 1% used fuel, as a resource worth around $100 trillion at current energy prices, and would transmute the remainder into waste which would decay to around the level of the ores from which it cane in around 300 years.
Still, whatever turns folk on. If anyone seriously thinks that energy at this price is worthwhile, it is much more direct and about as energy efficient to just burn the dollar bills.

I have a mea culpa to issue - they hit the remarkable capacity factor of 41%, and this is backed up by the info at this link:
http://www.ethree.com/GHG/19%20Solar%20Thermal%20Assumptions%20v4.doc

I have no idea how they manage to hit such a high capacity factor, considering it is dark 50% of the time!
So for peaking use the economics will be much better.
This is great news, as I have nothing against solar as such, and any contribution to energy needs is very welcome.

I agree Reel$$. Every now and then Obama does something worthy of praise. Obama and the Dems should increase incentives for development of these kinds of projects exponentially...which would be smart heading into the mid-term elections & with the oil spill still spewing in the gulf.

Most interesting is that this project is 250 MW on 3 square miles of land...clean energy, no radioactive waste, and short construction time lke ai_vin & SJC mentioned. I say s c r e w nuclear energy - there is so much barren land out west that you would think that the west could be filled up with these kinds of plants to fulfill all of America's electric needs...throw in wind, geothermal, upgraded grid, conversion to BEV's and we could be energy independent with terrorist-resistant, middle east regime-free energy within 50 years.

I have no idea how they manage to hit such a high capacity factor, considering it is dark 50% of the time!

I say s c r e w nuclear energy - there is so much barren land out west that you would think that the west could be filled up with these kinds of plants to fulfill all of America's electric needs

Nuclear is probably cheaper and more reliable, but I still don't think we will ever see it become a more significant contributor to our energy mix. Reason? The capital cost and time to build (due to permitting, politics, construction, and potential lawsuits) will keep private capital from investing. 3 Mile Island did not kill nuclear, WPPS did.

Unless the Government puts up all the money, we won't see nuclear soon. Will conservatives back that? Maybe since it is nuclear -- dogma again.

Meanwhile, solar and storage technologies will overtake the cost issues before a new nuclear plant in the US can come online. We may not be there yet, but we will in the 10 years it would take to get a nuclear plant up and running.

When they built the twin reactors of Diablo Canyon in California, they started to build them backwards, it had to be torn down and rebuilt. Those sorts of cost overruns are what keep nuclear costly. That and the underfunded insurance self funding that keeps a major liability on the Treasury books.

I am convinced that distributed storage will come along over time for UPS, peak shaving and load leveling. It might even coincide with the EV market quick charging and battery swaps with light weight lithium air batteries. 50 million homes with 40 kWh of storage adds up to a lot of capacity.

Why must it be a choice of renewables or nuclear?

The 'it's not windy everywhere, all the time so renewables are useless' arguement is a little bit short sighted.

We never rely on a single energy source at the moment, so why would we think it would be that way in the future?

From a rough (global) mix of 90% fossil fuel 5% renewable( mostly large hydro + biomass) and 5% nuclear, there is no reason by 2050 it couldn't look more like 40% FF 30% renewable and 30% nuclear.

Are we not mostly on the same side?

3PeaceSweet,
At low grid penetration wind can be fine. The trouble is that it is such an immensely variable resource, so once you reach, say, 10%of electricity supply then if the wind blows hard it can hit 100% of the region or country concerned,as happened recently in Spain.
So what do you do with the excess power? Throw it away, in which case you won't reach anything like the theoretical capacity, as you are not using it just when it is strongest?
Transform it into hydrogen or ammonia?
How do you amortize the reformers, when they are only used part of the time?
Switch off base load capacity like geothermal and nuclear, when their economics rely on operating all the time?

Solar is easier, as it is more predictable, although currently very expensive, and in areas like Phoenix at least coincides with peak load.

I am not totally against wind, but don't like wind tower technology, save at a relatively small grid penetration where the resource is exceptional.

If you could up the capacity factor then you might be on to a winner.
This project interests me, which would lift capacities to around 76%
http://www.cleanskies.com/videos/airbone-wind-turbine-technology-taking-flight

So what do you do with the excess power? Throw it away, in which case you won't reach anything like the theoretical capacity, as you are not using it just when it is strongest?

Same answer as wind: you bank it. Pumped hydro, CAES, that sort of thing. EV batteries are a good option if you had enough foresight to build the fleet and a charging infrastructure.

All the systems which were proposed to deal with the constant-output economics of nuclear and spiky daily/weekly demand work just as well with wind.

Al vin:
'All the systems which were proposed to deal with the constant-output economics of nuclear and spiky daily/weekly demand work just as well with wind.'

No they don't. Constant baseload providing power at a steady rate like nuclear, geothermal and to some extent hydro carry right on producing power day or night, so the most storage you are ever going to need is perhaps 6-8kwh per kw of power for daily variation.
This is also to some extent true for solar, providing that you are somewhere like Phoenix where annual variations aren't going to bother you too much, as most of the power is needed when it is hottest.

Wind is a whole different ball-game, as it can be calm for a week or blowing a gale for days on end.

The storage/back-up capacity needed is of a totally different order.