Another enormous solar plant has been approved in the southern California desert – the 485-megawatt Blythe Mesa Solar project.
The project – which will produce electricity for over 145,000 homes – will be on 3587 acres of privately owned, mostly "disturbed" former agricultural land.
Originally planned as the world’s biggest solar project – an eye-popping 1 gigawatt concentrating solar project – Blythe has been scaled down to 485 MW (because of environmental concerns), and will use solar PV instead.
The developer is Renewable Resources Group, a Los Angeles-based company that specializes in building utility-scale solar on disturbed land. As far as we know, NextEra Energy Resources, the renewable energy arm of Florida Power & Light, owns the project after buying it at auction from its now-bankrupt former owner.
While all the energy hasn’t been sold yet, health care group Kaiser Permanente is purchasing 110 MW.
Last year, Riverside County – the site for some of the largest solar projects – set fees for using their land. The $150 per acre annual fee will raise about $500,000 a year from this project. An even bigger project, the 750 MW McCoy Solar is also under construction there. It too is owned by NextEra, and is being built by First Solar.
Both projects are in the Department of Interior’s Riverside East Solar Energy Zone, an area established through the Western Solar Energy Plan as most suitable for solar development.
Read our article, US Is Home to World’s Three Largest Solar Farms.
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