POWER September 2014 - 26
TOP PLANTS
CPV Sentinel Energy Project,
Desert Hot Springs, California
Owner/operator: Competitive Power Ventures and Diamond Generating Corp.
Courtesy: CPV
Awash in a sea of wind turbines, California's Coachella Valley needed reliable peaking
generation to back up its intermittent wind power. Competitive Power Ventures
answered the call with the eight-unit, 800-MW Sentinel plant.
Thomas W. Overton, JD
D
riving west on Interstate 10 through
the Mojave Desert in California is a
mostly monotonous experience of
sand, scrub brush, and rolling, rocky hillsides.
When you enter the Coachella Valley
north of the Salton Sea, the desert is
increasingly broken up by the golf courses
and resorts of Palm Springs. But you soon
reach the San Gorgonio Pass, which separates
the desert from the greater Los Angeles
area, and your attention is seized by
another sight entirely.
On both sides of the highway, spreading
over the desert and climbing the mountains
around the pass, are wind turbines-thousands
of them, large and small, old and new, stretching
for miles across the sand and hills. It's
the oldest utility-scale wind farm in the U.S.,
and still one of the largest, comprising somewhere
between 3,000 and 4,000 turbines with
26
a total capacity between 600 MW and 900
MW (exact figures are difficult to come by
because of the large number of individual
owners and unclear data on which turbines
are still operational).
The San Gorgonio Pass is one of the
windiest spots in the U.S., as it's one of the
few gaps in the mountain ranges around Los
Angeles. Created by the San Andreas Fault,
which runs through it, the pass splits a range
that rises to nearly 9,000 feet on both sides.
On most days, cool, moist air from along the
coast is drawn into the hot, dry air of the desert,
creating winds that average 14 mph to 20
mph upwards of 300 days a year.
All that wind created a mecca for wind
farm development in the 1980s, and the area
has long been an important element of California's
renewable energy fleet. But as the
state's needs have grown with the passage of
www.powermag.com
its 33%-by-2020 renewables portfolio standard
(RPS), the need for peaking generation
and reliable ancillary services has grown
with it.
Meeting a Need
In the mid-2000s, as part of its long-range
planning, Southern California Edison (SCE)
began looking for new generation to meet its
needs for capacity and ancillary services in
the Los Angeles area, particularly Coachella
Valley. Maryland-based Competitive Power
Ventures (CPV), an independent generator
focused on natural gas and wind, proposed
building an eight-unit peaking plant near
Palm Springs. SCE and CPV entered a 10year
power purchase agreement for generation
from five of the eight units in February
2007 (later extended to all eight), and CPV
submitted its application for certification to
POWER | September 2014
http://www.powermag.com
POWER September 2014
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER September 2014
Contents
POWER September 2014 - Cover1
POWER September 2014 - Cover2
POWER September 2014 - Contents
POWER September 2014 - 2
POWER September 2014 - 3
POWER September 2014 - 4
POWER September 2014 - 5
POWER September 2014 - 6
POWER September 2014 - 7
POWER September 2014 - 8
POWER September 2014 - 9
POWER September 2014 - 10
POWER September 2014 - 11
POWER September 2014 - 12
POWER September 2014 - 13
POWER September 2014 - 14
POWER September 2014 - 15
POWER September 2014 - 16
POWER September 2014 - 17
POWER September 2014 - 18
POWER September 2014 - 19
POWER September 2014 - 20
POWER September 2014 - 21
POWER September 2014 - 22
POWER September 2014 - 23
POWER September 2014 - 24
POWER September 2014 - 25
POWER September 2014 - 26
POWER September 2014 - 27
POWER September 2014 - 28
POWER September 2014 - 29
POWER September 2014 - 30
POWER September 2014 - 31
POWER September 2014 - 32
POWER September 2014 - 33
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POWER September 2014 - Cover3
POWER September 2014 - Cover4
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