Utility Southern California Edison (SCE) (NYSE: EIX) energized seven new solar power plants this week with enough capacity to power 8,125 homes.
The new plants bring to 10 the number of SCE’s rooftop "neighborhood solar stations."
The newest installations are located in Ontario and Redlands, Calif. and have a combined peak generating capacity of 12.5 MW (AC).
Construction of the solar power plants last year created 250 temporary solar jobs. SCE estimates its entire solar photovoltaic project–75 to 100 roof–and ground-mount installations – will create up to 1,200 such jobs.
“When Southern California Edison originally announced its goal of building a network of local solar plants, we wanted to help speed up California’s deployment of solar generation while driving down the cost of photovoltaic panels for everyone,” said Mark Nelson, SCE director of generation planning and strategy.
The Ontario installations involved four solar stations on 1.8 million square feet of leased warehouse roofs owned by ProLogis. The 32,950 solar photovoltaic panels SCE has installed in Ontario are capable of generating 5.5 MW of power.
“We are excited to continue our work with SCE and bring these additional rooftop installations into production,” said Drew Torbin, ProLogis vice president of renewable energy. “Our partnership makes sense in many ways; by bringing together a large rooftop owner and a utility, we have achieved the speed and scale that was necessary to make a true impact on the rooftop solar industry.”
In Redlands SCE has built three installations, with 34,600 panels spread over 1.5 million square feet of ProLogis warehouse roofs. The panels can generate 7 million watts of power.
At the direction of the state utilities commission, SCE expanded its solar photovoltaic program by offering long-term power purchase agreements to independent producers willing to build neighborhood plants. So far, the utility has awarded 29 contracts, which will yield about 43 MW of new solar photovoltaic power for SCE customers.
In addition, SCE said it has seen an increase in the number of cost-effective solar photovoltaic energy bids to provide renewable energy to the utility. The winning bids show a significant reduction in the cost of solar photovoltaic. In November, SCE signed 20 such purchase agreements with the potential to produce 239 MW of power.
SCE’s neighborhood solar stations can be brought online relatively quickly once the distribution circuits they are being connected to are prepared to handle the new generator output and voltage controls.
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