SunPower kicks off 135MW solar power plant construction in California

SunPower has started construction of the 135MW Quinto solar project in Merced County, California, US.

Power generated from the solar plant will be supplied to Southern California Edison’s customers under a long-term power purchase agreement.

The company, as part of its recently announced holdco strategy, intends to own and operate the solar power plant during construction.

SunPower president and CEO Tom Werner said: "The advantages of SunPower’s technology, combined with our global footprint of more than four gigawatts of operating solar systems, give us confidence to deploy a holdco strategy with regard to Quinto.

"This strategy allows SunPower to realize the return on investment from the leading power-producing performance of our technology, and reduces the risk to potential buyers if we decide to sell the operational plant."

Under the strategy, the company also aims to enhance project margins and gain higher shareholder returns through the material benefit of its lower system degradation rates, long term project life as well as benefitting from distributions from the project as an equity owner.

During the peak construction of the project about 295 jobs will be created with approximately $80m in local economic impact.

Slated to be completed in late 2015, the project is expected to generate more than $5m of tax revenues while generating enough electricity for 40,000 homes.

Meanwhile, SunPower is also constructing a SunPower Oasis power plant system which can offset capable of reducing annual production of almost 134,000t of carbon dioxide emissions, according to estimates provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency.

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Image: SunPower breaks ground on 135MW Quinto solar plant in US. Photo: courtesy of dan / Freedigitalphotos.net.