June 12,2014
Did you know that Tulare County’s largest solar power developer is from New York City. New York City!?
It may be a good ways from the Central Valley but Mark Noyes,Vice President of Con Edison Development, says investing here makes sense.
Consolidated Edison is the nation’s oldest utility but it has spawned an entrepreneurial sister company – ConEdison Development.
“ConEd Development has been interested in clean energy not only for this country but for the world” says Noyes, adding that ”California has been the innovative leader for renewable energy.”
“As one of the top five solar developers in North America we want to be part of the action.”
Some 3 years ago, ConEd Development bought 2 solar farms under construction in remote SW Tulare County near Alpaugh – 20 MW and 90 MW. The units went on-line 2 years ago. Then a year later, they bought 2 more permitted projects,each 20MW – one called White River and the other across the Kings County border in Corcoran. These projects are under construction with the White River solar farm coming on line in August.
What is new is that ConEd Development has now acquired land for another 20MW project, 3 miles south in Tulare County, that will start construction in late 2014. Lastly, Noyes says the company will be adding another 20MW project near its Corcoran site.
And there will be more,he adds.
All in all,there are 170MW of solar power in their Tulare/Kings portfolio, the most of any other solar developer here, at least so far.
Several Kings County projects are on the cusp of breaking ground as well – all pushed by a looming 2016 deadline to qualify a 30% federal tax credit.
Noyes says several factors make Tulare County attractive for solar development. First, local government support for solar is strong. The the flat land,lacking water supply for farming, has ”tremendous insulation” or solar intensity.The fact that this is a crossroad for the state transmission grid makes it easier to both hook up and send power in any of four directions in the middle of the state. Lastly Tulare County is sandwiched between both big utility company service areas making power sales more competitive.ConEd Development’s electricity buyers are about evenly divided between PG&E and SCE, he says.
All this construction activity is great news for the Central Valley this year – mired in a terrible drought – meaning fewer farm jobs. Thousands of solar construction jobs will be added to build a backlog of projects in the 4 county Central valley region over the next 18 months.
Noyes says there is a continuing drop in prices as panel costs decline as well as scale and experience – helping to make everything more efficient.
Besides their utility-scale projects, another sister unit ConEdison Solutions, does customer based solar projects like the solar farm they did for the City of Kerman, helping to reduce costs at their wastewater
plant.
Consolidated Edison, Inc., parent company of Con Edison Development, has publicly announced a capital investment of over $250 million in renewable energy during the next three years through its unregulated subsidiaries. “We are exploring opportunities to develop, own and operate a range of solar, wind, bio-diesel, flywheels and energy storage installations in the United States.”