Adding to its ever-growing list of solar projects in California, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has signed off on a 92MW solar thermal deal with Alpine SunTower, LLC, a subsidiary of NRG Energy, Inc. The project builds on eSolar and NRG’s existing collaborative agreement that saw the companies agree to bring around 500MW of solar thermal energy to the U.S.
Scheduled for completion in 2012, the new installation will be situated close to Lancaster, California and will utilise eSolar’s solar thermal technology, which features a proprietary combination of optics and software. The plant will consist of two 46-MW sites, each of which will be located on a quarter square mile of land.
“With the only operating solar power tower technology in the U.S., this new agreement with world-class utility PG&E points to the success of NRG and eSolar to develop solar thermal generation,” said Bill Gross, CEO of eSolar. “eSolar’s power towers can be designed in variable configurations and are easily scalable to meet the growing and evolving needs of forward-looking power providers like PG&E.”