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Few places cry out more for the widepsread implementation of solar energy solutions than the desert state of Arizona. Can you imagine the sweet irony of all those air conditioners working overtime during the blazing summer months, eventually getting their power from household PV modules, building-integrated arrays, or even from solar power channeled through the grid?

Although that sustainable scenario is a long way from reality, there's finally a project worthy of one of the sunniest places on the planet, one which will send a substantial amount of sunbeam juice to the grid in a few years.

The news that Spanish-based technology and renewable energy company Abengoa will build a 280-MW plant for Arizona Public Service Co. southwest of Phoenix has a certain "what took you so long?" ring to it. The facility's name, Solana, means "sunny place" in Spanish, which could apply to Anyplace, AZ, including Gila Bend, site of the new venture. The fact that Abengoa, a Spanish company, scored the contract has a certain historical "goes around comes around" resonance to it, given imperial Spain's initial colonization of the area in the early days of the European forays into the Americas.

The utility company will buy all the power generated by the plant, enough for some 70,000 homes and $4 billion in revenues over 30 years for APS. If it were up and running today, the Solana station would be the largest solar power plant in the world, according to the project partners, but it won't be providing watts to the grid until 2011. The site will be about 1900 acres, or nearly 3 square miles. In terms of megawattage and area, the plant will dwarf the 40-MW, 110-hectare expanse being built by Juwi group near Leipzig, in considerably less sunny eastern Germany.



What an artist imagines the Solana site might look like.

While the German solar farm will deploy hundreds of thousands of First Solar CdTe modules, Solana will rely on Abengoa's proprietary concentrating solar power (CSP) trough technology, which, as the company's PR says, "uses trackers with high-precision parabolic mirrors that follow the sun's path and concentrate its energy, heating a fluid to over 700 degrees Fahrenheit and using that heat to turn steam turbines. The solar plant will also include a thermal energy storage system that allows for electricity to be produced as required, even after the sun has set."

On the solar manufacturing front, one of the leading players in the thin-film photovoltaic arena also calls Arizona home. Global Solar, based down the road from Solana in Tucson, will cut the ribbon on its new CIGS fab early next month. The plant will ramp to 40 MW of capacity by next year and feature a large "solar field" right next door. The company announced in January that it's hitting 10% conversion efficiencies on its production runs of flexible laminate PV substrates, so it's on a bit of a roll.

Look out, California, because Arizona's now got a claim to some bragging rights for solar preeminence in the emerging US market.