Owner NRG Energy and project designer SunPower announced today that the first of a projected 100,000 homes are already benefiting from the plant at San Luis Obispo, 100 miles north west of Los Angeles.
Since construction began on the CVSR in September 2011, the project has provided 350 jobs and will inject an estimated US$350 million into the local economy by the time it is fully operational in December 2013.
"We congratulate NRG and SunPower on this important milestone at the California Valley Solar Ranch," said Fong Wan, senior vice president for energy procurement at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which will buy the power from NRG and SunPower under a 25-year power purchase agreement.
The project partners will run the plant for the first two years before NRG takes sole ownership.
NRG has four large-scale plants partially or fully operational and another three under construction across California which has set a 33% renewable energy target Arizona and New Mexico with several distributed projects across the U.S.
SunPower has 190 MW of large-scale solar plants across the United States with another 1,000 MW under contract.
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