eSolar, the IKEA of Solar Energy, to Unveil Modular Power Plant This Year

Just in time for Earth Day, the folks at eSolar announced that they've raised $130 million from Idealab, Google.org, Oak Investment Partners and other investors for the construction and deployment of modular, pre-fabricated solar thermal power plants. They also said they'd unveil a partial prototype this year.

If IKEA was in the business of generating electricity, it would be eSolar. Listen to eSolar's CEO Asif Ansari describe his product:

The eSolar power plant is based on mass manufactured components, and designed for rapid construction, uniform modularity, and unlimited scalability.

Sounds an awful lot like a Billy bookshelf, no? Each eSolar module, though, is designed to generate 33MW of power -- enough juice to power 10,000 homes. If you need 330MW, you just buy ten modules and put them together. It's not exactly flat-pack home furnishings, but it's the same world-changing idea.

Here's what a managing partner at Oak, one of the big investors, is calling eSolar's solution...

.....a truly disruptive scalable solution that can be deployed rapidly.

And by "disruptive" he means this: the technology changes the rules of the game in the power industry. The way IKEA changed the rules for furnishing a home.

Even to this degree: eSolar's power plants are easy to install -- it's a low skill job. Rob Rogan, who heads up eSolar's marketing, said "I can do it. It's pretty intuitive."

Presumably you'll need more tools than those little Allen wrenches and nifty fasteners IKEA supplies with its furniture. But you don't need the heavy equipment, cranes and trained engineers now required to put traditional thermal power plants together:

eSolar has replaced expensive steel, concrete, and brute force with inexpensive computing power and elegant algorithms. This new method of installing a solar power plant minimizes costly civil construction and the use of heavy equipment, dramatically reducing project cost and deployment time.

That's a big claim when you consider that a 33MW modular plant needs 160 acres of land -- about 1/4 of a square mile. It's still a job for a trained construction crew that knows what to do when they open the eSolar box. Inside are many identical towers and thousands of small mirrors -- each about a meter square in size -- engineered back in eSolar's manufacturing plant -- to essentially snap together.

At least that's how it seems after talking to eSolar executives, who are playing the details very close to the chest. They're promising to show off a portion of a module at a demonstration facility somewhere in Southern California before the end of this year.

eSolar says solar energy that is cheaper than coal is the goal. The company isn't yet ready to divulge the cost of a module, but claims that right now, its solution is competitive with natural gas, which can produce electricity for 9 cents a kilowatt hour. Between the rising price of both gas and construction, eSolar sees an edge. The edge doesn't yet extend to coal, which is producing power at an average of 5 cents kilowatt hour, eSolar says, though the company expects price parity in the future.

If you figure in a price for carbon emissions, will that level the playing field with coal? eSolar has no comment.

The company prefers to talk about what a small, modular solar plant can do: you can bring this solution closer to cities and load centers, access grid locations that other solutions cannot. It's cost-competitive and well-distributed around the grid.

Here's the promise from eSolar:

The company’s solar power plant solutions are tailored to fit local resources and produce a low environmental footprint, favoring a straightforward siting and permitting process. Myriad locations combined with a multitude of interconnection options mean that eSolar can deliver more clean, carbon free power where it is needed: near the cities and towns where it is consumed.

There's now a new $130 million bet on this promise -- a power plant that is easy to manufacture, ship and assemble. Instead of putting solar PV units on every rooftop or building a giant solar thermal plant in some faraway desert, eSolar is aiming to provide a solution that occupies a flexible middle ground.

Stay tuned.

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