PHOTO CREDIT: SUNPLUGGERS.COM
Utility-scale buying of solar PV modules
may drive down the cost for consumers.
Above, a 2009 solar fair in San Diego.

Published March 11, 2010

Shortly after agreeing to buy 300 megawatts of electricity production from a proposed solar power plant in Southern California's low desert, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has won approval of its plan to buy 230 megawatts from a solar plant in the high desert.

Neither solar site has yet received all the necessary government endorsements. One project, Desert Sunlight, would be constructed in the lower-altitude Colorado Desert east of Palm Springs. The 230-megawatt plant, called AV Solar Ranch One, is planned west of Lancaster in the Mojave Desert's Antelope Valley.

These projects and others, such as Southern California Edison's recent announcement that it plans to buy 200 megawatts of solar panels from a California-based company, are important to future mom-and-pop solar buyers for one key reason: prices.

Giant utility-scale power projects that use photovoltaic modules – the same solar panels installed for homes and businesses – should drive down the cost of equipment for average consumers by allowing manufacturers to ramp up factory production lines and achieve economies of scale.

The capacities of the solar PV projects planned  – 550 megawatts for Desert Sunlight, 230 megawatts at AV Solar Ranch One, and 500 megawatts to be distributed throughout the SCE service area – are enormous. These projects alone would total 1,280 megawatts, about double California's existing total of grid-tied solar capacity.

That megawatt total is about the same as the peak production capacity of a large nuclear power plant. And much more solar than this is coming to California, if current plans are even remotely realized. About 200 more utility-scale solar power plants are now proposed in Southern California. Even if only a fraction are built, the state's energy equation is likely to be transformed as solar PV costs are driven down and owners of homes and businesses increasingly adopt the technology.

Contrary to many mass-media reports, non-subsidized solar electricity prices are already well below the highest-tiered utility rates at the best-suited sites in much of California. With incentives, solar-electricity bargains are available to large numbers of consumers in California, as well as some in other states who have ample access to unshaded sunlight. A combination of continued solar price reductions and utility rate increases could enlarge the solar market prodigiously across the country.

The Antelope Valley solar plant is to be built by NextLight Renewable Power, based in San Francisco, if permit approval is received from federal, state and county officials.  The Public Utilities Commission has approved a 25-year power-purchase agreement under which PG&E will buy electricity from AV Solar Ranch One. Construction is tentatively planned to start later this year and be completed by the end of 2013.

The solar plant would be built on about 2,100 acres of a farm used from about the 1940s to the 1990s for growing alfalfa, wheat and onions. The land has already been cleared by farming and the property is zoned for heavy agricultural use. Southern California Edison plans a new substation about 3.5 miles north of the site, which would be connected to it by a new high-voltage transmission line.

PHOTO CREDIT: SUNPLUGGERS.COM
An existing solar-thermal power plant
in Lancaster. The planned AV Solar
Ranch One would use photovoltaic
modules no more than 14 feet high.

About 300 construction workers would be needed, and about 20 permanent technicians, security workers and maintenance employees.

AV Solar Ranch One would be built just northwest of the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, where a spectacular annual display of desert wildflowers draws thousands of visitors.

The project has received wide support in the Antelope Valley, home to many people who commute "down the hill" to the Los Angeles metropolitan area. A local newspaper reported last year that a support group for the poppy reserve was not opposed to the solar plan.

An existing 5-megawatt solar installation in Lancaster, the Sierra Sun Tower, provides electricity to Southern California Edison. That project, developed by the company eSolar, uses solar thermal technology, in which mirrors concentrate the sun's rays on a towering boiler. The steam produced turns turbines to generate electricity.