Sempra Announces Plans to Expand Nevada Solar Installation to 58MW

Sempra Announces Plans to Expand Nevada Solar Installation to 58MW

Sempra Generation plans to add a 48-megawatt solar energy plant to its 4-month-old, 10-megawatt El Dorado site in Nevada, which would create the largest operational photovoltaic solar-power facility in North America, the company said today. His company, a subsidiary of the Fortune 500 firm Sempra Energy, has a goal becoming the first U.S. company to build, own and operate 500 MW of solar power. The new plant, which is to be called Copper Mountain Solar Construction, is to be built by First Solar of Tempe, Ariz. First Solar also built the El Dorado facility.

Sempra Generation says its building the biggestand cheapestsolar power plant in the U.S. And its not even looking to outer space to do so. That will include in excess of 300 megawatts of solar power near Sempras existing power plant in Arizona, said chief executive Mike Allman in an interview. The 58-megawatt Nevada installation, using thin-film solar panels made by Tempe-based First Solar, piggybacks on an existing natural gas-fired plant. That said, the economics of Sempras thin-film installations arent quite as rosy as some have speculated, with never-confirmed analyst cost estimates as low as 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour.

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