Solar in Solano
By Melissa Murphy
Posted: 10/17/2009
Crews from Silverwood Energy lift one of nearly 9,700 solar panels Friday at the PG&E Vaca-Dixon Solar Station. (Rick Roach / The Reporter)
Pacific Gas and Electric Company is heating things up with a new solar station in Vacaville.
The new Vaca-Dixon Solar Station is currently under construction off of Midway Road in Vacaville and is a pilot project that uses solar panels to generate clean solar energy for PG&E customers.
Construction began in August and the station is scheduled to be completed in November. The company hopes to have it online in December. The pilot project utilizes 9,672 fixed-tilt, 53-pound, ground-mounted solar panels.
"This shows the progress of a major facility moving toward renewable energy," said Spencer Smith, business development manager for SOLON Corporation, the Arizona-based company responsible for producing the solar panels. "This is a really clean source of electricity."
The Vaca-Dixon Solar Station is the first step in a proposed five-year program to develop 500 megawatts of solar power throughout northern and central California -- 250MW will be built by PG&E and the other 250MW by independent developers.
PG&E is still waiting for approval from the California Public Utilities Commission for the entire project. If approved, the program is expected to deliver more than 1,000 gigawatt hours of solar power each year by 2015, equal to the annual consumption of about 150,000 average homes. In all, according to PG&E officials, the program would meet more than 1.3 percent of PG&E's electric demand.
Where feasible, such as the one in Vacaville, projects developed and owned by PG&E would be built on land already owned by the utility or near its substations to minimize the cost and delays of interconnecting them to the power grid.
PG&E Technical Lead Consultant Bill Gittler explained that because of it's proximity to the substation -- it sits directly behind the facility -- no one has to be on site to run the new solar station, but only on occasion for maintenance reasons.
Jesus Arellano of Silverwood Energy fastens a solar panel in place at the PG&E Vaca-Dixon Solar Station south of Midway Road in Vacaville. (Rick Roach / The Reporter)
