North American Development Bank invests in 20MW solar plant in California

The North American Development bank has loaned T Solar US$67.7 million, through land developers Sol Orchard for a 20MW solar plant.

The plant was certified 8 April 2013 by the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) and will be developed on 53 hectares of Imperial Irrigation District (IID) land in El Centro, Imperial County, California.

Spanish firm T Solar is a subsidiary of Isolux Infrastructure.

Solar panels will be supplied by Yingli, trackers by STi Norland and inverters from GPTech. Engineering, procurement, and contracting services (EPC) will be carried out by Isolux USA.

IID plans to purchase power generated to provide energy to 14,000 households in Imperial County, San Diego and Riverside.

The power purchased will help IID to meet its renewable energy purchasing target of 20% renewable energy by 2013 (25% by 2016 and 33% by 2020) as part of California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS).

US$311 million is being loaned in total to eight utility-scale solar projects in California, Arizona and Texas by the North American Developmental Bank. When completed, these projects will have an installed generation capacity of 96MW.