BrightSource Announces Big Solar Energy Deal With Southern California Edison
February 11, 2009 by editor
Filed under Featured, Technology
BrightSource Energy of Oakland scored another big deal in California today, announcing a contract to supply Southern California Edison with solar energy from remote desert generating plants — enough to power 845,000 homes.
The deal for 1,300 megawatts of renewable energy is believed to be the biggest contract for so-called solar thermal power, which uses heat from the sun to create steam to spin electric turbines.
BrightSource Energy
The agreement calls for a series of seven plants to be built in far-flung areas of southeastern California over the next seven years. If approved by regulators, the first 100-megawatt facility would be constructed in the Mojave Desert near the San Bernardino County community of Ivanpah. That plant could be operational by 2013.
Sempra Solar Energy Project Makes Advances In Costs
January 7, 2009 by editor
Filed under Large Solar Installations, Solar News
An analyst says a Sempra Generation project powering California homes beats conventional sources on cost-effectiveness.
Construction supervisor Jorge Uribe examines solar panels used in Sempra's Nevada project.
LOS ANGELES - Generating clean electricity that’s as cheap as power from fossil fuels is the Holy Grail of green-energy companies. A new solar project powering California homes appears to be closing in on that prize.
Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy in San Diego, just took the wraps off a 10-megawatt solar farm in Nevada. That’s small by industry standards, enough to light just 6,400 homes. But the ramifications are potentially huge.
A veteran analyst has calculated that the facility can produce power at a cost of 7.5 cents a kilowatt-hour, less than the 9-cent benchmark for conventional electricity.
If that’s so, it marks a milestone that advocates for renewable energy have longed for: “grid parity,” in which electricity from the sun, wind or other green sources can meet or beat the price performance of carbon-based fuels.
Paramount Farms Opens Largest U.S. Single-Site Agricultural Solar Energy Plant in California
May 24, 2007 by admin
Filed under Solar News
Supported By The 2007 California Solar Initiative, The $7.5 Million, Eight- Acre Solar Energy Plant Will Alleviate Demand On Central Valley’s Municipal Power Grid During Summer Months
Paramount Farms $7.5M solar facility covers 8 acres in California's San Joaquin Valley.
LOST HILLS, Calif., May 23, 2007 - Paramount Farms, the world’s largest vertically integrated supplier of pistachios and almonds, today announced the opening of the Paramount Farm’s Solar Plant, a 1.1 mega-watt, $7.5 million solar energy plant in California’ s San Joaquin Valley. Spanning eight acres, it is the largest single-site, privately-owned, operating solar plant in the U. S. and is expected to supply about 15 percent of the energy that the company’s nut processing facility uses each year.
Solar Plant Is a Significant Agricultural “Green” Initiative
The solar plant represents a significant initiative undertaken by the Central Valley’s farming community to lessen the burden on local municipal power suppliers by generating environmentally-friendly, sustainable alternatives. According to the state’s Department of Food & Agriculture, California is the nation’s No. 1 agricultural producer and exporter with $32 billion in direct farm sales in 2005. Of California’s Top 10 agricultural communities, seven are located in the Central Valley, representing a combined agricultural value of more than $20 billion.
