GlassPoint’s Oman pilot plant. (Courtesy of GlassPoint)
Today the state oil company of Oman announced a landmark deal with
California-based solar developer GlassPoint to build the world’s largest
solar project. Named Miraah, the $600 million installation will cover
750 acres of desert with glass houses inside which long sheets of
aluminum will catch sun rays and concentrate the energy
to produce steam.
The facility’s peak output will be in excess of 1,000
megawatts. Just how big is that? By comparison, the largest currently
operating solar farms, built by First Solar FSLR +0.85% in California, have nameplate capacity of 550 mw.
What use does a Middle Eastern oil giant have for solar power? Well
many of the fields operated by Petroleum Development Oman, or PDO,
contain heavy oil. Loosening up that oil and getting it to flow requires
the injection of massive amounts of steam. PDO currently burns natural
gas to generate that steam, but with gas reserves depleting, that’s not
sustainable. After three years of study, PDO (which produces more than
1.25 million bbl per day) has determined that solar power is a more
economic method.
The Miraah project will produce 6,000 tons of steam per day, enough
to coax out about 35,000 barrels per day of heavy oil in the Amal field.
Over the course of a year the solar collectors will displace about 5.6
trillion BTU of natural gas — that’s enough to provide electricity for
more than 200,000 Omanis. “This opens up the opportunity for Oman to use
its natural gas for higher-value applications, to diversify its economy
and create more jobs,” says John O’Donnell, v.p. of GlassPoint, in an
interview today.
Will Miraah really be able to claim the title of world’s biggest
solar installation? After all, its solar collectors are turning the
sun’s energy into steam, not electricity like those big California solar
farms. O’Donnell says there’s really no distinction. “A watt is a watt
whether it’s in the form of electricity or in heat.”
PDO has tested numerous solar steam systems over the past five years,
and GlassPoint built a pilot plant there in 2012. The San
Francisco-based company’s technology won out for the Miraah project
because of its simplicity and reliability. From afar, the system looks
like row after row of agricultural greenhouses — but instead of tomato
plants the houses are filled with flimsy mirrors — little more than
curved sheets of aluminum foil, suspended by wires from the ceiling. As
the sun moves across the sky, small motors pull the wires to adjust the
mirrors’ pitch. The reflected rays are concentrated on a network of
pipes carrying water. (For more on the company, check out my 2011 Forbes
Magazine story, or this post.)
Plenty of other solar developers have tried other methods to generate
steam. BrightSource built a 100-acre steam generating system for Chevron CVX +0.67%
in California, which focused the light from free-standing mirrors onto a
300-foot-tall water tower. But that method doesn’t work as well in
Oman, where strong winds regularly cover everything with sand that would
scratch such mirrors.
Automated brushes clean GlassPoint’s houses after the sun goes down,
and because they protect what’s inside from the elements the mirrors and
motors are much lighter and cheaper than other solar reflecting
systems. “We put a lot of effort into the pilots,” says Raoul Restucci,
managing director of PDO, in a phone interview today. “And we found the
GlassPoint technology is incredibly simple and it works incredibly
well.”
GlassPoint built another pilot plant in a California heavy oil field
in 2010 for Berry Petroleum, since acquired by Linn Energy. O’Donnell
says the subsequent shale gas supply surge made solar steam uneconomic
in California, but that could soon change with California planning to
overhaul its Renewable Fuel Standards to better incentivize such
carbon-saving projects. The Miraah installation is expected to displace
enough natgas to save 300,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions each
year, the equivalent of taking 60,000 cars off the road.
Once completed in 2017, the Miraah solar installation may be the
biggest in the world, but it will be only the beginning for Oman’s solar
initiative. PDO will need to double Miraah just to supply 100% of the
steam needed for the Amal field. After that, there’s more than 20 other
fields in Oman that also employ steam for enhanced oil recovery. Oman’s
neighbors are interested too. GlassPoint has been in discussions with
the oil companies of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. And the global supermajors
are watching; though Petroleum Development Oman is 60% owned by the
Sultanate, Royal Dutch Shell holds about 30% of the equity in PDO and is also an investor in GlassPoint.
Just don’t expect GlassPoint to get the love it deserves from the
anti-oil greenies who must be aghast that their beloved solar power
could find an economic application in helping to produce more oil.
“Solar is only going to achieve large scale if the economics work,” says
O’Donnell. “A lot of people who like to point fingers just can’t
count.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2015/07/08/oil-giant-to-build-worlds-largest-solar-project/2/?ss=energy