Sempra Energy Beams Over Completion of Solar Plant

California’s major utilities have been scrambling to meet a state mandate that requires using renewable energy sources to generate 20 percent of the electricity they supply by 2010. So San Diego’s Sempra Energy (NYSE: [[ticker:SRE]]) had good reason to bask yesterday as it announced its Sempra Generation subsidiary has completed the company’s first solar energy project, a 10-megawatt photovoltaic facility about 40 miles southeast of Las Vegas, NV.

Except that electric power from the new solar plant is going to Pacific Gas & Electric to help the San Francisco regional utility meet its renewable energy requirement. PG&E says it has signed a 20-year power-purchase agreement for electricity generated by the solar plant. At peak production, Sempra’s new El Dorado Energy Solar facility can generate enough electricity for about 6,400 homes.

San Diego Gas & Electric, the utility owned and operated by Sempra Energy, currently generates about 6 percent of its total electric power from renewable energy sources. PG&E was at 12 percent—before Sempra completed its solar project in Nevada.

SDG&E has plans to develop its own sources of renewable energy, but the utility concedes it may not meet the state’s 2010 deadline. Meanwhile Sempra Generation, a more free-wheeling (i.e. unregulated) business unit, developed the solar project next to its 480-megawatt gas-fired power plant near Boulder City, NV.

Sempra says its new solar plant is the largest “thin film” solar power installation in North America. Construction began five months ago, and required installing more than 167,000 solar modules across 80 acres of Nevada desert. Sempra also plans to expand the El Dorado solar plant to 60 megawatts. First Solar, (NASDAQ: [[ticker:FSLR]]), of Tempe, Ariz., provided the thin-film solar panels, and led engineering and construction of the project.

The California Public Utilities Commission still must approve PG&E’s contract with Sempra for electricity generated by the plant.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.