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PG&E, SunPower Announce Major Solar Deal by Matt Nauman The Mercury News, August 14, 2008

Sunpower, Optisolar Plan Nation's Biggest Plants in San Luis Obispo County

For more than a year, San Jose's SunPower has been touting a 14-megawatt photo-voltaic solar array at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas as the largest in the nation. That's about to change in a big way.

Pacific Gas & Electric announced two deals Thursday that will result in 800 megawatts of power from massive facilities using PV panels - enough to power nearly a quarter-million homes, according to the utility.

SunPower, best known for making solar panels used on homes and businesses, will now build a utility-scale-size plant. The 250 megawatt facility, to be constructed in San Luis Obispo County, will start generating power in 2010 and reach full capacity in 2012. It will require approval from local and state regulators.

The second deal, announced at a press conference at PG&E's San Francisco headquarters, is even larger. The utility said it will buy 550 megawatts of power from a plant built by OptiSolar, a Hayward company. The plant, to be called the Topaz Solar Farms, uses thin-film solar panels that use sunlight to create electricity. Its technology allows it to deposit a thin layer, or film, of amorphous silicon on solar panels.

"It's monumental," said Julia Hamm, executive director of the Solar Electric Power Association in Washington, D.C. "I really think it demonstrates that the time for solar has come. It's not some small niche thing anymore for rooftops." For more than a year, San

Jose's SunPower has been touting a 14-megawatt photovoltaic solar array at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas as the largest in the nation. That's about to change in a big way.

Pacific Gas & Electric announced two deals Thursday that will result in 800 megawatts of power from massive facilities using photovoltaic panels - enough to power nearly a quarter-million homes, according to the utility.

SunPower, best known for making solar panels used on homes and businesses, will now build a utility-scale-size plant. The 250 megawatt facility, to be constructed in San Luis Obispo County, will start generating power in 2010 and reach full capacity in 2012. It will require approval from local and state regulators.

The second deal, announced at a press conference at PG&E's San Francisco headquarters, is even larger. The utility said it will buy 550 megawatts of power from a plant built by OptiSolar, a Hayward company. The plant, to be called the Topaz Solar Farms, will also be built in San Luis Obispo County. It will use thin-film solar panels that use sunlight to create electricity. Its technology allows it to deposit a thin layer, or film, of amorphous silicon on solar panels.

"It's monumental," said Julia Hamm, executive director of the Solar Electric Power Association in Washington, D.C. "I really think it demonstrates that the time for solar has come. It's not some small niche thing anymore for rooftops."

Numbers confirm the scope of the announcement. Hamm's group has tabulated recent announcements amounting to 95.5 megawatts of solar power from central-station photo-voltaic plants. If constructed, the plants announced by PG&E will generate more than eight times as much power. SunPower's biggest installations include the one at the Nellis base and four in Spain between 18 and 23 megawatts. It also has announced a deal with Florida Power & Light for two projects totalling 35 megawatts.

"The size perspective is very important, and quite shocking," said Fong Wan, PG&E's vice president of energy procurement. "We believe that PV has come to the point where it competes effectively with other alternative forms of energy, and it's pretty close to making a good run at gas-fired power."

For SunPower, it's a full-circle moment, as founder Richard Swanson envisioned large solar farms in the desert shipping power to cities back in the 1970s. It wasn't economically feasible then, he said, but technological innovations and increased production volumes have made it so now.

"As costs have come down, the cost of alternatives have gone up, so we're rapidly reaching a tipping point," said Swanson, SunPower's president and chief technical officer.

Companies such as Palo Alto's Ausra and Oakland's BrightSource Energy have signed deals with PG&E to produce energy at solar thermal plants where arrays of mirrors heat a fluid and turn a turbine. But the SunPower deal, where electricity is generated using silicon-based photo-voltaic solar modules, will "probably have people falling off their chairs from Osaka to Madrid," said Julie Blunden, a SunPower vice president. That's because many still think photo-voltaic systems are only suitable for homes and businesses, she said.

For OptiSolar, the news represents a milestone. It announced its intention to build the 550-megawatt plant earlier this year. Now, it has a buyer for the power.

That plant will be huge - covering nine square miles. "But it's very visually unobtrusive,'' said Randy Goldstein, OptiSolar's chief executive officer. "The modules are fixed in place and are three feet off the ground. It almost looks like a lake." OptiSolar has said it will build a 1 million-square-foot plant in Sacramento to make the panels and other hardware needed for this project and subsequent ones.

In a statement, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called the solar news "a huge step toward meeting our long-term renewable energy and climate change goals"

In all, PG&E says, the two plants will deliver 1.65 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. The utility now says it has 3,600 megawatts of renewable energy contracts. It is required under state law to get 20 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2010.