NTR has announced plans to build its first large-scale solar power plant with the deployment of 60 SunCatcher machines in Arizona within 5 months. The firm expects the 1.5MW project to demonstrate the commercial viability of a system that uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy on to an engine which converts thermal energy to grid-quality electricity. The project will be “a reference plant” for larger commercial projects in California and Texas with 1600MW of power capacity. Although each SunCatcher dish has been shown in tests to generate up to 25,000 watts, the business may have a requirement to build as many as 6000 for a commercially viable development. SES has 10 working SunCatchers, but only four use the design that will be rolled out in the Maricopa project. The project will be located next to the Agua Fria power plant in Peoria, Arizona, run by US utility group Salt River Project. NTR’s Tessera Solar unit will lease the land from SRP, which will buy the solar energy.
