photo: green wombat
The land rush to build solar power plants in California is attracting prospectors from around the world. PG&E (PCG) earlier this month held its annual bidder’s conference to solicit proposals to supply the utility renewable energy. Green Wombat has obtained a partial list of attendees and it shows that everyone from Silicon Valley startups to Spanish solar power station operators are looking to cash in on the state’s growing demand for green electricity. Among those present:
- OptiSolar, a Bay Area thin-film solar startup.
- Bright Source Energy, the new incarnation of solar pioneer Luz, which built nine solar power plants (photo above) in the Mojave in the 1980s.
- FPL Energy (FPL), the renewable energy division of utility FPL and the current operator of seven of the old Luz plants.
- Green Volts, a San Francisco-based concentrating photovoltaic solar startup.
- Solucar Power, the U.S. subsidiary of Spanish solar power station operator Abengoa.
- SolarMission Technologies, the U.S. arm of Australian solar tower company EnviroMission.
- Boeing (BA), whose Spectrolab subsidiary makes high-efficiency solar cells. In the 1980s Boeing experimented with Stirling dishes designed to produce utility-scale solar energy.
- SunEdison, the Maryland solar developer which just broke ground on an 8-megawatt photovoltaic power station in Colorado to supply green electrons to utility Xcel Energy (XEL).
- Sempra Generation, the power plant subsidiary of energy giant Sempra Energy (SRE), which owns one California’s largest utilities, San Diego Gas & Electric.
Other participants came from China (Solarfun) and Japan (J-POWER USA Development). In the 2007 request for proposals, PG&E is looking for bids to build up to 800 megawatts of renewable energy.
Green Wombat 
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