The Department of Energy announced Monday that it has awarded its biggest ever solar loan guarantee: $2.1 billion to Oakland-based Solar Trust of America for construction of the Blythe Solar Power Project in California’s Mojave Desert.
The massive solar plant will cover 7,025 acres of federal land. When completed, Blythe is expected to generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power roughly 300,000 single-family homes each year.
Developer Solar Trust of America is a joint venture between the German firms Solar Millennium and Ferrostaal.
The California Energy Commission unanimously approved the project in September, and the federal Bureau of Land Management, which owns the land, cleared the project in October.
“It’s really good news, and it’s another step on our journey to one-third renewable energy,” said Gov. Jerry Brown, referring to the California’s new standard requiring the state’s utilities to get 33 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. “We’ve got a lot of sun to harness, and we need the technology and capital to do it.”
The loan program allows the Energy Department to guarantee the debt of private companies, thereby helping get capital-intensive clean-energy projects off the ground by making it easier for cleantech companies to raise money from the private sector. Last week, the Energy Department announced that it had finalized a $1.6 billion loan guarantee to BrightSource Energy, also in Oakland, for the construction of its Ivanpah solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert. The Blythe project is also solar thermal.
The Mojave Desert is considered an ideal location for utility-scale solar power plants. But it also is critical habitat for the desert tortoise, western burrowing owl, bighorn sheep and Mojave fringe-toed lizard. In approving the deal, regulators required Solar Trust of America to purchase an additional 7,000 acres of private land to be set aside and protected.
Contact Dana Hull at 408-920-2706. Follow her at Twitter.com/danahull.