California To Get The Largest Ever Solar Power Plants

On Friday, solar panel maker SunPower Corp. announced it would join the huge project put together by Pacific Gas & Electric Corp., according to which two solar power plants will be built in California.

It was said the two plants would have an electricity output twelve times larger than the biggest similar power plant functional today. They will occupy more than 12 square miles of land in the middle of the state with solar panels; in any given cloudless day, they would generate around 800 megawatts, which is quite close to the power output a small nuclear plant would have.

The power is to be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, which, by 2010, must obtain one fifth of its electricity from renewable sources.
According to Jennifer Zerwer, a spokeswoman for the utility, similar projects could be extrapolated all over the world; she considers it to be a milestone.

OptiSolar, maker of solar panels, is to deploy 550 megawatts in San Luis Obispo County. The SunPower Corporation, also a solar panel maker, but using a different type of technology, will install 250 megawatts somewhere else in the county. The panels provided by SunPower will be placed at a 20-degree angle towards south and will be able to switch exposure from east to west in order to continuously face the sun. OptiSolar’s panels will be built at a fixed angle; although they will be larger and less effective, they will also be cheaper to built and therefore the final results would pretty much be the same.