Green Options

Aora-Solar, an Israeli company, has constructed and launched the first solar energy natural gas hybrid electric power plant. The flexibility of their design permits small communities to tap into solar power.

After camping near the Barley Barber Swamp for a week, 17 activists were arrested yesterday for trespassing and resisting arrest. The group, all members of Everglades Earth First!, say they were camping out to convince Florida Power & Light to open the swamp to the public due to increasing concerns that their nearby coal plant is draining the swamp of its water.

According to Earth First!, independent scientific studies have shown the swamp’s water level to be decreasing dramatically every year, but FPL denies the accusation and says they have maintained appropriate water levels under an agreement with the South Florida Water Management District.

Florida Power & Light, the state’s biggest utility, broke ground today on what it says will be the first utility-scale solar investment in the state — and the first hybrid solar facility in the world to combine a solar-thermal field with a combined-cycle natural gas power plant.

Consisting of 180,000 mirrors spread out over 500 acres, FPL’s 75-megawatt Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center is situated on the Atlantic coast just north of Palm Beach County.FPL’s new facility is The Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center will use less fossil fuel when heat from the sun is available to help produce the steam needed to generate electricity. It also matches solar power with an existing combined-cycle natural gas plant, so that when the sun is not shining, the natural gas can take over the work of powering the turbines.

The planets may be aligned to finally make solar competitive with coal, according to an article in Bloomberg.com by Greg Chang. Rising natural gas prices, the extension of tax credits for solar investment, and the near-certainty that carbon emissions caps will be imposed by the next U.S. administration, will make it happen. A concentrated solar thermal plant in California’s Mojave Desert, run by FPL, Inc., uses 550,000 mirrors [...]