The photo above shows the 50 MW (million Watt) Luning Solar Plant. I’ve been working on this project since April of 2014 and we are getting ready to place it into service in the coming week or so. It will provide 25% of the energy we sell to our customers in the eastern California area. The reason this project is so significant is that we were able to use a tax equity investor, but it is a utility owned asset. The tax benefits are not normalized. This structure makes our project competitive with other merchant (non-utility) solar plants. This may sound confusing, but it means utilities can own solar projects at cost competitive rates vs. buying the energy from a 3rd party. That’s very important and means utilities should follow our lead and invest in solar instead of buying energy from others. Utilities don’t make money off of energy purchases. BUT, they do make money on infrastructure they build to serve their customers. For this reason, utilities should be lobbying congress to increase renewable portfolio standards (these are laws the require utilities to utilize renewable energy).
Here’s the 15 MW Nellis II solar project. I worked on this project in early 2014 helping to design the substation and associated feeders to collect the energy.
This is the Apple/NV Energy 20 MW project. It uses SunPower’s new C7 tracker that focuses the sun’s energy on a row of very efficient solar cells. I worked on this project in 2013.
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