POWER December 2013 - 30

TOP PLANTS
Mesquite Solar 1, Maricopa
County, Arizona
Owners/operators: Sempra U.S. Gas & Power and Consolidated Edison Development
Courtesy: Sempra U.S. Gas & Power
Sempra U.S. Gas & Power's jointly owned Mesquite Solar 1 project added 150 MW
of photovoltaic-generated electricity to the grid in January 2013, making it one of
the largest PV projects of its type in the country. Sempra U.S. Gas & Power's longterm
plan is to expand the facility to 700 MW.
Dr. Robert Peltier, PE
C
alifornia has been pursuing renewable
generation since enactment of its Renewable
Portfolio Standard (RPS) in
2002, which had the goal of increasing renewable
generation to 20% of the state's electricity
mix by 2017. That goal was codified in
2006. In the meantime, the 2003 Integrated
Energy Policy Report (IEPR) recommended
accelerating the schedule to 20% by 2010, a
plan that utilities were ill prepared to meet,
principally because of transmission limitations.
The following year, the 2004 IEPR
again recommended an update to the plan,
advancing the goal to 33% by 2020. ThenGovernor
Arnold Schwarzenegger signed
Executive Order S-14-08 in Nov. 2008 requiring
retail sellers of electricity to comply
with the new RPS standard. The RPS was
codified when Governor Edmund G. Brown,
Jr. signed SBX1-2 in April 2011. The RPS
standard applies to all publicly owned utilities,
investor-owned utilities (IOUs), electricity
service providers, and community
choice aggregators.
30
There has been marked progress toward
the RPS goal during the past few years. As
of December 2012, California's three large
IOUs reported that they serve 19.6% of their
2012 retail sales with RPS-eligible renewable
energy, slightly less than the compliance goal
of no less than 20%. Sempra Energy's wholly
owned subsidiary San Diego Gas & Electric,
at 20.31%, was the only California IOU to
meet the 2011-2013 renewable energy goal.
Another 2,800 MW of renewable energy
is scheduled to enter service in California
during 2013, and more than 644 MW came
online in the first quarter of this year. At 150
MW, the largest of those new projects was
Sempra U.S. Gas & Power's Mesquite Solar
1. Power from Mesquite Solar 1 is being sold
to California's Pacific Gas & Electric under a
20-year-contract.
Solar Industry Leader
Sempra Energy, a Fortune 500 energy services
holding company, is the parent of project
developer Sempra U.S. Gas & Power (a
www.powermag.com
consolidation of Sempra Energy's U.S. operations
outside of its California utilities,
completed in January 2012) and the regulated
public utility San Diego Gas & Electric.
Sempra U.S. Gas & Power has a very strong
history among developers of utility-scale PV
projects, going back to the completion of the
company's first solar energy project-the
10-MW El Dorado Solar PV plant in Boulder
City, Nev. That plant was named a 2009
Top Plant winner for its well-designed integration
with the adjacent El Dorado Energy
gas-fired combined cycle plant. I wrote at
the time, " El Dorado is Sempra Energy's
first solar power generation project but will
likely not be its last. "
Indeed, POWER also named Sempra
U.S. Gas & Power's Copper Mountain Solar
1, adjacent to the El Dorado facility,
a 2011 Top Plant. That plant entered service
in December 2010. At the time of the
award, the 48-MW plant was recognized as
" the largest photovoltaic plant in the U.S. "
Since then, the smaller plant has been inPOWER
| December 2013
http://www.powermag.com
POWER December 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of POWER December 2013
