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DOE Finalizes Seven Loan Guarantees Before Program Deadline

Hours before the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) controversial advanced energy loan guarantee program (funded under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) expired on Friday, the agency finalized seven loan guarantees totaling more than $5.9 billion. Projects include solar power facilities in California, Nevada, and Arizona, and a bioenergy project in Kansas.

Five of the loan guarantees finalized are for photovoltaic (PV) projects. The DOE finalized:

  •  A $1.237 billion guarantee to support the 250-MW PV California Valley Solar Ranch Project, sponsored by SunPower Corp., in San Luis Obispo County, Calif.
  • A partial guarantee for a $1.4 billion loan to support Project Amp, a solar generation project that includes the installation of approximately 752 MW of PV solar panels on about 750 existing rooftops owned and managed by Prologis in 28 states and the District of Columbia.
  • A $646 million loan guarantee to support the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 Project, a 230-MW cadmium telluride thin-film PV solar generation facility in North Los Angeles County, Calif.
  • Partial loan guarantees of $1.46 billion to support the Desert Sunlight Project. The 550-MW project in Riverside County, Calif., is expected to be one of the world’s largest solar PV plants, using approximately 8.8 million cadmium telluride thin-film solar PV modules.
  • A $337 million loan guarantee to Mesquite Solar 1, LLC to support the development of an innovative 150-MW PV project in Maricopa County, Ariz.

The DOE also approved a $737 million loan guarantee for the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a 110-MW concentrating solar power tower generating facility in Tonopah, Nev. Using molten salt as the primary heat transfer and storage medium, the project will be the “first of its kind in the United States and the home to the tallest molten salt tower in the world,” the DOE said.

On Friday, the DOE also announced a finalized $132.4 million loan guarantee to Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas to support the development of a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant.

Sources: POWERnews, DOE

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