Making progress on its goal of having 250MW of commercial rooftop PV power deployed within the next four years, Southern California Edison has interconnected seven new distributed-generation solar plants. The systems, located on more than 3.36 million square feet of ProLogis-owned warehouse roof space in the Southern California cities of Ontario and Redlands, have a combined installed generating capacity of 12.5MW (AC).
The newly activated plants bring to 10 the number of what SCE calls “neighborhood solar stations,” which can be brought online quickly once the distribution circuits they are being connected to are prepared to handle the new generator output and voltage controls.
Construction of the solar power plants last year created 250 temporary jobs, and SCE estimates its entire solar photovoltaic project –which will eventually total 75 to 100 roof- and ground-mount installations–will produce up to 1200 such jobs.
The four Ontario installations feature 32,950 crystalline-silicon PV panels (5.5MW) deployed on 1.8 million square feet of roofs leased by SCE from ProLogis. The trio of Redlands systems are comprised of 34,600 cSi modules (7MW) spread over 1.5 million square feet of rooftops.
“When Southern California Edison originally announced its goal of building a network of local solar plants, we wanted to help speed up California’s deployment of solar generation while driving down the cost of photovoltaic panels for everyone,” said Mark Nelson, SCE director of generation planning and strategy. “Current market indicators reveal that solar photovoltaic power is now substantially less expensive for our customers than when we launched this project.”
“We are excited to continue our work with SCE and bring these additional rooftop installations into production,” said Drew Torbin, ProLogis vice president of renewable energy. “Our partnership makes sense in many ways; by bringing together a large rooftop owner and a utility, we have achieved the speed and scale that was necessary to make a true impact on the rooftop solar industry.”
For more details on the latest SCE rooftop solar project moves, check out this blog.