6 July 2011

DOE offers $4.5bn in conditional loan guarantees to support three Californian CdTe PV plants

Last week US Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced offers of conditional commitments for loan guarantees of about $4.5bn to support three alternating-current cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film photovoltaic (PV) solar generation facilities. 

The Department of Energy (DOE) is offering conditional commitments for a $680m loan guarantee to AV Solar Ranch 1 LLC for the 230MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project, for partial loan guarantees of $1.88bn to Desert Sunlight 250 LLC and Desert Sunlight 300 LLC for the 550MW Desert Sunlight project, and for partial loan guarantees of $1.93bn to Topaz Solar Farms LLC for the 550MW Topaz Solar project. 

First Solar Inc of Tempe, AZ, USA, which makes thin-film photovoltaic (PV) modules based on cadmium telluride (CdTe) as well as providing engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) services, is sponsoring all three projects and will provide modules from a new manufacturing plant that has begun construction in Mesa, AZ, as well as from its recently expanded manufacturing plant in Perrysburg, OH, which serves as its primary hub for engineering, research and development.  The firm expects that the projects will create a total of 1400 jobs in California during peak construction.

“These projects will bring immediate jobs to California in addition to hundreds more across the supply chain,” says Chu. “Together, the projects will power hundreds of thousands of homes with clean, renewable power and increase our global competitiveness in the clean energy economy.” 

The 230MW Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project will be located in the Antelope Valley area of the Western Mojave Desert (about 80 miles north of Los Angeles) and is expected to generate 350 construction jobs. It will feature utility-scale deployment of inverters with voltage regulation and monitoring technologies that are new to the US market. The inverters enable the project to provide more stable and continuous power, increasing the efficiency and reliability of large-scale solar power plants greater than 100MW. The facility is expected to generate more than 622,000MW-hrs of electricity per year (equivalent to powering over 54,000 homes) and will avoid over 350,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. Power output will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric Company. 

The 550MW Desert Sunlight project will be located on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in eastern Riverside County, CA, and is expected to generate 550 jobs during construction. It is expected to use 8.8 million CdTe PV modules, generating enough electricity to power more than 110,000 homes and avoiding over 735,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. Construction will take place in two phases: Phase I will generate 300MW (to be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric Company); Phase II will generate 250MW (to be sold to Southern California Edison). The $1.88bn in loans will be funded by a syndicate of institutional investors and commercial banks led by lead lender and lender-applicant Goldman Sachs Lending Partners LLC, which submitted the project under the Financial Institution Partnership Program (FIPP), and co-lead arranger Citibank N.A.

The 550MW Topaz Solar project will be located in eastern San Luis Obispo County, CA, and is expected to generate 500 jobs during construction. It will use more than 8.5 million CdTe PV modules, generating enough electricity to power about 110,000 homes and avoiding nearly 725,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.  Power output will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric Company.  The $1.93bn in loans will be funded by a syndicate of institutional investors and commercial banks led by lead lender and lender-applicant The Royal Bank of Scotland plc, which submitted the project under the Financial Institution Partnership Program (FIPP).

The DOE’s Loan Programs Office administers three separate programs: the Title XVII Section 1703 and Section 1705 loan guarantee programs, and the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing (ATVM) loan program. The loan guarantee programs support the deployment of commercial technologies along with innovative technologies that avoid, reduce, or sequester greenhouse gas emissions, while the ATVM supports the development of advanced vehicle technologies. Under all three programs, DOE has issued loans, loan guarantees or offered conditional commitments for loan guarantees totaling over $38bn to support 40 clean energy projects across the US. The program's 23 generation projects will produce more than 32 million megawatt-hours annually (enough to power over 2.5 million homes). To date, the program has conditionally committed more than $16bn in loan guarantees to support 15 solar generation projects. DOE has also conditionally committed financing to support many other projects, such as four of the world’s largest solar projects, two geothermal projects, the world’s largest wind farm, and the USA’s first new nuclear power plant in three decades. 

See related items:

DOE offers loan guarantee for 290MW First Solar-built Arizona PV project

Tags: First Solar Thin-film photovoltaic CdTe

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