The Carrizo Energy Solar Farm was a proposed 177

megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

(MW)

solar thermal Solar thermal energy (STE) is a form of energy and a technology for harnessing solar energy to generate thermal energy for use in Industrial sector, industry, and in the residential and commercial sectors. Solar thermal collectors are classified ...

power plant, to be built by Ausra in

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Carrizo Plain The Carrizo Plain ( Obispeño: ''tšɨłkukunɨtš'', "Place of the rabbits") is a large enclosed grassland plain, approximately long and up to across, in southeastern San Luis Obispo County, California, United States, about northwest of Lo ...

, near Simmler. The location gets less sun than the

Mojave Desert The Mojave Desert (; ; ) is a desert in the rain shadow of the southern Sierra Nevada mountains and Transverse Ranges in the Southwestern United States. Named for the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous Mohave people, it is located pr ...

, where several other solar thermal plants are under consideration, but is near an existing

transmission line In electrical engineering, a transmission line is a specialized cable or other structure designed to conduct electromagnetic waves in a contained manner. The term applies when the conductors are long enough that the wave nature of the transmis ...

from

Diablo Canyon Power Plant The Diablo Canyon Power Plant is a nuclear power plant near Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, California. Following the permanent shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2013, Diablo Canyon is now the only operational nu ...

, reducing the cost and time needed to construct the plant. The $550 million power plant would have provided enough power for 60,000 homes, and

Pacific Gas and Electric The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). The company is headquartered at Kaiser Center, in Oakland, California. PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 million households in the norther ...

(PG&E) entered into a contract to buy all the power from the power plant. Ausra claimed its technology can deliver power at 10.4 cents per

kilowatt-hour A kilowatt-hour ( unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a non-SI unit of energy equal to 3.6 megajoules (MJ) in SI units, which is the energy delivered by one kilowatt of power for one hour. Kilowatt-hours are a comm ...

(¢/kW·h). Ausra planned to have the plant generating power by 2010, using Ausra's Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) solar technology. In November 2009, Ausra announced that it had sold its options to the of land to

First Solar First Solar, Inc. is a publicly traded American manufacturer of solar panels, and provider of utility-scale PV power plants, supporting services that include finance, construction, maintenance and end-of-life panel recycling. First Solar uses ...

and canceled its contract with PG&E. First Solar will use some of the land for its

Topaz Solar Farm Topaz Solar Farms is a 550 megawatt ( MWAC) photovoltaic power station in San Luis Obispo County, California, United States. Construction on the project began in November 2011 and ended in November 2014. It is one of the world's largest s ...

References

External links

* {{Solar power in the United States Solar power stations in California Companies based in San Luis Obispo County, California Areva