Inside Tucson Business
Published on Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Bell Independant Power Corp., of Rochester, New York, is coming to build and operate a 5mw solar plant with a thermal storage system that will be the first of its kind in the world.

The company was announced today (Jan. 19) as the first tenant of the University of Arizona Science and Tech Park's Solar Zone announced last week.

This solar generation plant will take up 45 acres and will be built at a cost of $32 million. It will be able to power 1,500 typical tucson homes.It will create 75 jobs to build the facility and 7 full time jobs to run it. It will begin supplying power to Tucson homes in 2011.

This is a concentrator plant, meaning it will use mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays to heat a tower with oil in it. The new technology allows for incresed production after the sun goes down. Tucson Electric Power has asked the arizona corporation commission to approve its plan to purchase power from the plant over a 20-year period.