DOE Offers Conditional Loan Guarantee Commitments to Three Calif. PV Plants
Last Thursday, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced offers of conditional commitments for loan guarantees of approximately $4.5 billion to support three alternating current cadmium telluride (Cd-Te) thin film photovoltaic (PV) solar generation facilities.
The DOE is offering a conditional commitment for a $680 million loan guarantee to support the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project, conditional commitments for partial loan guarantees of $1.88 billion in loans to support the Desert Sunlight project, and conditional commitments for partial loan guarantees of $1.93 billion in loans to support the Topaz Solar project.
First Solar Inc., with headquarters in Tempe, Ariz., is sponsoring all three projects and will provide Cd-Te thin film solar PV modules for the projects from a new manufacturing plant that has begun construction in Mesa, Ariz., as well as from its recently expanded manufacturing plant in Perrysburg, Ohio, which serves as its primary hub for engineering, research, and development. The company expects that the projects will create a combined 1,400 jobs in California during peak construction.
The 230-MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project will be located in the Antelope Valley area of the Western Mojave Desert, approximately 80 miles north of Los Angeles. The DOE says the project is expected to generate 350 construction jobs and will feature a utility-scale deployment of innovative inverters with voltage regulation and monitoring technologies that are new to the U.S. market. The inverters enable the project to provide more stable and continuous power, increasing the efficiency and reliability of large-scale solar power plants greater than 100 MW. The facility is expected to generate over 622,000 MWh per year. Power from the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
The DOE is offering conditional commitments for partial loan guarantees to Desert Sunlight 250, LLC and Desert Sunlight 300, LLC to support the Desert Sunlight project. The 550-MW project is expected to generate 550 jobs during construction and will be located on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in eastern Riverside County, Calif. It is expected to use 8.8 million Cd-Te thin film solar PV modules, which are commercially proven and have been deployed since 2001. Project construction will take place in two phases; Phase I will generate 300 MW of power, which will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric Co., while Phase II will generate 250 MW of power, which will be sold to Southern California Edison. The $1.88 billion in loans that are partially guaranteed by the DOE will be funded by a syndicate of institutional investors and commercial banks led by lead lender and lender-applicant, Goldman Sachs Lending Partners LLC, which submitted the project under the Financial Institution Partnership Program (FIPP), and Citibank N.A. as co-lead arranger.
The DOE is offering conditional commitments for partial loan guarantees to Topaz Solar Farms, LLC to support the Topaz Solar project. The 550-MW project is expected to generate 500 jobs during construction and will be located in eastern San Luis Obispo County, Calif. It will use over 8.5 million Cd-Te thin film solar PV modules. The project’s power will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. The $1.93 billion in loans that are partially guaranteed by the DOE will be funded by a syndicate of institutional investors and commercial banks led by lead lender and lender-applicant, The Royal Bank of Scotland plc, which submitted the project under the FIPP.
Source: DOE