DoE Offers Conditional Loan Guarantee Commitments to Support Nearly $4.5 Billion in Loans for Three California PV Plants

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced offers of conditional commitments for loan guarantees, of approximately $4.5 billion, to support three alternating current cadmium telluride (Cd-Te) thin film photovoltaic (PV) solar generation facilities.

The department is offering a conditional commitment for a $680 million loan guarantee to support the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project, conditional commitments for partial loan guarantees of $1.88 billion in loans to support the Desert Sunlight project, and conditional commitments for partial loan guarantees of $1.93 billion in loans to support the Topaz Solar project.

First Solar, Inc., with headquarters in Tempe, AZ, is sponsoring all three projects and will provide Cd-Te thin film solar PV modules for the projects 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 company expects that the projects will create a combined 1,400 jobs in California during peak construction.

“These projects will bring immediate jobs to California in addition to hundreds more across the supply chain,” said Secretary 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.”

DOE is offering a conditional commitment for a loan guarantee to AV Solar Ranch 1, LLC to support the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1 project. The 230 megawatt (MW) project will be located in the Antelope Valley area of the Western Mojave Desert, approximately 80 miles north of Los Angeles, California. The project is expected to generate 350 construction jobs and will feature a utility-scale deployment of innovative inverters with voltage regulation and monitoring technologies that are new to the U.S. market. The facility is expected to generate over 622,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year, equivalent to powering over 54,000 homes, and will avoid over 350,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.