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Air Force Col. Dave Belote (left) and Eric Vanderleest, a technician for SunPower, walk through an array of solar
panels at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. SunPower is one of two companies that plan to build solar power plants in California
that are 10 times larger than any currently in service.



Two Large Solar Plants Planned in California Companies will build two solar power plants in California that together will
put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, the latest indication that solar energy
is starting to achieve significant scale.

The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate
about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant.
A megawatt is enough power to run a large Wal-Mart store.

The power will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, which is under a state mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from
renewable sources by 2010. The utility said that it expected the new plants, which will use photovoltaic technology to turn
sunlight directly into electricity, to be competitive with other renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and
solar thermal plants, which use the sun’s heat to boil water.

“These market-leading projects we have in California are something that can be extrapolated around the world,” Jennifer
Zerwer, a spokeswoman for the utility, said. “It’s a milestone.”

Though the California installations will generate 800 megawatts at times when the sun is shining brightly, they will operate
for fewer hours of the year than a coal or nuclear plant would and so will produce a third or less as much total electricity.

OptiSolar, a company that has just begun making a type of solar panel with a thin film of active material, will install 550
megawatts in San Luis Obispo County. The SunPower Corporation, which uses silicon-crystal technology, will build about 250
megawatts at a different location in the same county.

The scale is a leap forward.

“If you’re going to make a difference, you’ve got to do it big,” said Randy Goldstein, the chief executive of OptiSolar.
The scale of the two plants will “bring a new paradigm to bear” for the industry, he said.

At 800 megawatts total, the new plants will greatly exceed the scale of previous solar installations. The largest photovoltaic
installation in the United States, 14 megawatts, is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, using SunPower panels.

Spain has a 23-megawatt plant, and Germany is building one of 40 megawatts. A recently built plant that uses
mirrors to concentrate sunlight, called Nevada Solar One, can produce 64 megawatts of power.

Solar power remains expensive compared with making electricity from coal or natural gas, but it is bounding ahead,
driven by quotas set by the states.

California’s 20 percent renewable standard is one of the toughest, and companies there are afraid they will miss a
deadline in 2010. Pacific Gas & Electric expects that when the new plants are completed, its total will rise to 24 percent,
but not until 2013.

Both plants require numerous permits, and plans could still go awry. The companies involved said they expected that
building gargantuan plants would achieve economies of scale in the cost of design, installation and connection to the
electric grid.

The companies said they were forbidden by contract terms to talk about price, and a spokeswoman for Pacific Gas &
Electric said her company was trying to obtain the best possible deal for ratepayers by not telling other suppliers of
renewable energy what it was willing to pay.

But all three companies said the costs would be much lower than photovoltaic installations of the past.

SunPower’s panels are mounted at a 20-degree
angle, facing south, and pivot from west to east over the course of the day to face the sun. OptiSolar’s are installed at a

fixed angle. They are larger and less efficient, but also much less costly, so the cost per watt of energy is similar, company
executives said.

Both are good at producing power at a time of day when the prices tend to be high, in the afternoon.

Neither approaches the economy of fossil-fuel burning plants, said Ms. Zerwer, the spokeswoman for Pacific Gas & Electric.
But they will be competitive with wind power and with power from solar thermal plants, which are equipped with mirrors
that use the sun’s heat to boil water into steam. And prices will fall, she predicted.

Her company, she said, was “going to contribute to the virtuous cycle of technology innovation and lower unit manufacturing
cost, by purchasing on such a scale.”

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CD

About time I heard some positive energy news that didn't revolve around giving oil companies access to more land to drill on...

I've also heard that IBM recently came out with a promising new type of solar collector that is 500% more efficient in energy collecting. The only crazy thing is that the 12.5 sq miles of land that is being used... that's a LOT of land! But I started thinking that we as a country have a good amount of desert land here that is unsuitable for anything else. Why not maximize that output? Hell, imagine if Africa had access to a tremendous amount of power... they might actually start to become industrialized all over! I'm pretty sure the standard of living would improve, and they would be able to join the world markets and could possibly help our country with trade.

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BackdoorJesus

Yeah thats nice, but 12.5 square miles is way way way too big, impractical to build many plants at that scale. Either solar collection technology needs to get more efficient or we need to find something else.

I say build more clean, efficient nukes.

But that's just me.

And a growing consensus of people in this country.

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i'm rich biatch

Walmart = 1 megawatt

That's insane

FattyJJ

Why do you care how big it is? Is it in your back yard? Nuclear is better than coal, I will give you that. But it still produces waste, waste that doesn't decompose for 10's of thousands of years.

But, your wish for smaller and more efficient solar isn't that far away. Have you seen the stuff that is being made now in a film? It uses the entire spectrum, instead of the small amount current panels absorb. They even say they may have figured out how to make a paint that will work.

There is no denying that the sun is the way to go. In one day it shines enough light on the world to power earth for a year.

Juan.©amaney

12.5 square miles really isn't much. That's an area of about 3.5 miles by 3.5 miles. In densely populated areas it seems like a lot, but when you take a flight over the US you seen to realize that wow...there is a lot of wasted space...so to speak.

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Queso

silly mexican

onlyalad

hey 12.5 (I was almost caught in the #bug) square miles of land turned into a wasteland, even more so than it already is. The ecosystem changed. I would love solar power if it is a part of something else. i.e. Make every new building have solar collectors on the roof. So many more square miles of panels would be created if every house and Wal mart was made into a solar collector. As roofs are replaced (every ? years) all new roofs must have solar. Heck add wind as well. Every 1000 square feet of home/business has a wind turbine added. The power companies would pay the people who used less than the created.
Elect me King of the US and this and other great ideas will be put into law. ha