The largest photovoltaic (PV) power plant in the United States was completed last week, as Arizona-based First Solar finished building the Copper Mountain Solar Facility in Boulder City, Nevada, 40 miles east of Las Vegas.
The plant was constructed on behalf of Sempra Generation — a San Diego, California power provider to wholesale electricity markets — as part of Sempra’s plan to install over 1,000 megawatts (MW) of solar capacity in California, Arizona and Nevada combined. In order to reach that goal, Sempra already has plans to build a 600-MW PV plant in Arizona and a 200-MW PV facility in Ken County, California.
Approximately 250 workers built the facility in one year. It is now the largest PV plant in the U.S.
Construction of the Copper Mountain Plant began in January of this year, just one month after Sempra received approval to build the plant from California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). It required 350 workers to complete in one year.
All told, the 380-acre, 48-MW power plant consists of approximately 775,000 PV panels and is expected to produce enough energy to power 14,000 average American homes each year. Combined with Sempra’s adjacent 10-MW El Dorado solar plant, completed just last year, the two solar facilities will be using over 1 million PV panels to harness the sun’s energy.
Power generated by both plants will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), one of California’s three major investor owned utilities (IOU’s), through a pair of 20-year power purchasing agreements (PPA’s). PG&E signed the PPA to buy power from the Copper Facility back in July 2009. The utility signed a separate 20-year PPA to purchase the El Dorado power in 2008.
Both plants will play a major role in California’s attempt to meet the statewide renewable energy requirement of 20 percent of the state’s energy coming from renewable sources by the end of 2010 and 33 percent from renewable sources by 2030.
