Smaller Solar Farms Ease, Speed Development

(MoneyWatch)  Utility scale solar power plants generally follow one maxim: Bigger is better. Many of the plants being planned -- but not yet built -- range from hundreds of megawatts in size up to multiple gigawatts, covering massive swathes of land to equal the output of coal plants.

This is causing some predictable problems, like riling environmentalists and requiring a fast build-out of expensive transmission lines to remote areas. It's also difficult to clear regulatory hurdles and gain financing for giant projects, especially in the current environment.

All that means that the first plants we'll see will likely be small, modular and easy to set up in out-of-the-way spots. Take Infinia for example, a company that I just wrote about in Fortune Small Business. Infinia makes a three kilowatt dish that uses a stirling engine to convert sunlight to energy; each dish is a unit to itself, much like a bank of solar panels.

Of course, it's not much of a consumer product. You won't see Infinia dishes on rooftops in San Francisco, at any rate. But the size means that Infinia, or companies that buy its dishes, can link up groups of them on small land areas near transmission capacity

In practice, Infinia will want multiple megawatt installations, because there are still economies of scale. But they're smaller economies. By staying under 50 megawatts, the company avoids permitting headaches, and makes development more palatable. A better known company with the same plan is eSolar, which became famous when Google invested in it last year.

ESolar has actually designed their solar thermal plants to produce 46 megawatts of power -- just under the threshold. CEO Bill Gross, who I just spoke with, says that the company's first demonstration plant will be running in two months; I'll be publishing a full interview with him on Monday.

Finally, there's Nanosolar, thin-film solar panel manufacturer, which last year announced that it would build small plants on unused municipal land, thus cutting out transmission losses entirely. The company is now advocating feed-in tariffs, which suggests they want to do more work at the utility scale.