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In the San Luis Valley, a 30 MW Solar Farm Starts Production

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November 10, 2011

In the San Luis Valley, a 30 MW Solar Farm Starts Production

By Cheryl Kaften
TMCnet Contributor

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Forget Malibu or Boulder. If you’re looking for real estate that is sizzling in value now and expected to heat up even more, the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado — a wide, flat expanse of desert land — should be your first stop. According to clean energy developer Iberdrola Renewables, this particular area of Alamosa County offers some of the best resources for solar power in the United States.


Portland-based Iberdrola Renewables, known mainly for wind power development to date, is diversifying its portfolio: The San Luis Valley Solar Ranch, a former potato and carrot farm in Mosca, will start producing power for the grid within the next week and will be officially commissioned in December.

The ranch has been designed and built for Iberdrola by SunPower of San Jose, California. For this project, the solar energy firm installed 110,000 highly-efficient SunPower E19 panels mounted on SunPower Tracker systems, which follow the sun. The tracker systems also reduce land-use requirements by generating 25 percent more energy-per-land-area than conventional systems.

Roughly 220 acres of solar panels will produce about 30 megawatts of energy. The regional utility, Xcel Energy, which is purchasing the power, estimates it will supply about 7,500 homes during peak usage times. This marks the sixth partnership between Iberdrola and Xcel Energy, together bringing a total of 400 megawatts of clean energy to utility customers.

“It is a unique pleasure to enter into the solar power business, and once again partner with the Xcel Energy family of companies, whose vision for clean energy is helping drive new renewable technologies in many parts of the country,” said Martin Mugica, executive vice president for Iberdrola Renewables. “Tapping into limitless, homegrown sources of power is how Iberdrola Renewables will continue to grow, and meet the needs of its customers.”

According to CNET news, running the $100 million ranch will be a lonely job — as well as one that is fraught with responsibility. The “ranch-hand” has no lasso or tractor; his main tool is a single PC.

Operations Manager Nick Thiel will run the entire plant himself from a small office building located not far from the panels. His main monitoring instrument will be his personal computer, which is connected to a network of thousands of sensors in the field. The sensors will create a flow of status-related information back to a custom software application that provides a graphical view of the plant—and will alert Thiel by email or text to possible malfunctions and problems.

Having worked on wind turbines, which have many more moving parts, Thiel expects monitoring the solar farm to be relatively quiet. "My biggest concern is the weather, but we're taking precautions with the [meteorological] tower and [the Iberdrola] national control center," he said, adding that lightning and high winds can create hazards. If a storm with high winds hits the valley, SunPower tracking system is programmed to set the panels in a safer, horizontal position.

Alhough it’s one of the company’s first solar projects, Iberdrola has developed more than 40 wind farms in 17 U.S. states — two of which are in Colorado — and is confident its past experience with wind power development will propel the company into future success in the solar industry.

“We look at renewable projects of all different technologies and, if they are a great fit for us in terms of sustainability and performance, we’ll consider it,” said Communications Manager for Iberdrola Renewables, Paul Copleman. “Our successful track record in wind power development has prepared us for success in solar.”

In related renewable energy news, the company that installed the panels, SunPower, is taking some heat, itself these days The company received a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee under Section 1705 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 for another photovoltaic project—the 250 MW California Valley Solar Ranch in San Luis Obispo County, California—just hours ahead of the September 30 deadline and just three weeks after it announced it was building new manufacturing plant in Mexicali, Mexico.

Now, according to the conservative blog, Human Events, the company is on the brink of failure. “It is carrying $820 million in debt,” the publication said, “an amount $20 million greater than its market capitalization,” noting that, If SunPower [were] a bank, the feds would shut it down.  Instead, it received a lifeline twice the size of the money sent down the Solyndra drain.”

Solyndra, which received a $535 million federal loan guarantee and was endorsed by the current Democratic Obama Administration as an example of his emphasis on "green jobs," filed for bankruptcy in September and laid off 1,000 workers. Since then, the company has become a focal point for Republican opposition to government investments in clean energy. It remains to be seen whether Republicans will now cast a similar shadow on SunPower.


Cheryl Kaften is an accomplished communicator who has written for consumer and corporate audiences. She has worked extensively for MasterCard (News - Alert) Worldwide, Philip Morris USA (Altria), and KPMG, and has consulted for Estee Lauder and the Philadelphia Inquirer Newspapers. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Rich Steeves

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