CPS, Juwi Team Up in San Antonio Solar Plant
RECHARGE News
CPS, the largest US municipally owned electric company, and Juwi Solar, based in Boulder, Colorado, estimate Blue Wing will provide power for 1,800 homes in and around the seventh largest US city. Plans call for Juwi to install 214,500 solar photovoltaic modules, which will generate an estimated 25,345 megawatt-hours of electricity a year.
Juwi Solar, part of Germany’s Juwi Group, expects to break ground on Blue Wing in the first quarter of 2010 and begin producing electricity later that year. Michael Martin, managing director of Juwi Solar, says the agreement demonstrates his company’s ability to deliver utility-scale solar solutions that are technologically advanced and can be financed. CPS two months ago signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Tessera Solar for 27MW of solar power from a proposed facility in West Texas.
“Now with 41 MW, CPS Energy has the most solar-generated electricity under contract in the state of Texas,” says Cris Eugster, executive vice president and chief sustainability officer at CPS. “We are already number one nationally in wind-energy capacity among municipally owned utilities.”
CPS has made a commitment to acquire up to 100MW of solar electricity by 2020, part of the utility’s goal to achieve renewable-energy capacity equal to 20 percent of customers’ peak electrical demand by that date.
Owned by San Antonio, the utility serves 690,000 electric customers and almost 320,000 natural gas customers.
