The Hooper Solar PV Power Plant is a 50
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 ...
(
MWAC)
photovoltaic power station
A photovoltaic power station, also known as a solar park, solar farm, or solar power plant, is a large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic power system (PV system) designed for the supply of merchant power. They are different from most building ...
in the
San Luis Valley
The San Luis Valley is a region in south-central Colorado with a small portion overlapping into New Mexico. The valley is approximately long and wide, making it the largest alpine valley in the world. It extends from the Continental Divide on ...
, located near the town of
Mosca, Colorado
Mosca (Spanish for fly) is an unincorporated community and a U.S. Post Office in Alamosa County, Colorado, United States. Mosca's population is 1,072 as of the 2020 census. It was named for the nearby Mosca Pass, which was named for the Spani ...
. It was the largest solar facility in the state when it came online at the end of 2015. The electricity is being sold to Public Service of
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...
, a subsidiary of
Xcel Energy
Xcel Energy Inc. is a U.S. regulated electric utility and natural gas delivery company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, serving more than 3.7 million electric customers and 2.1 million natural gas customers across parts of eight states (Color ...
, under a long-term
power purchase agreement.
Facility details
The facility occupies about 320
acre
The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...
s of previous agricultural farmland, and is located near several other large solar power plants in the sunny and cool San Luis Valley. It was developed and constructed by
SunPower
SunPower Corporation is an American provider of photovoltaic solar energy generation systems and battery energy storage products, primarily for residential customers. The company, headquartered in San Jose, California, was founded in 1985 b ...
, and is owned by a subsidiary of the French company
Total S.A.
TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and is one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas explorat ...
which is also the majority owner of SunPower.
The plant is built using SunPower's Oasis Power Plant System, which includes single-axis
tracking
Tracking may refer to:
Science and technology Computing
* Tracking, in computer graphics, in match moving (insertion of graphics into footage)
* Tracking, composing music with music tracker software
* Eye tracking, measuring the position of ...
, robotic panel cleaning, and real-time monitoring at the company's operations center.
Construction began in early 2015, and employed about 150 workers.
Mortenson Construction completed the site preparation and installed the array support
piles
Hemorrhoids (or haemorrhoids), also known as piles, are vascular structures in the anal canal. In their normal state, they are cushions that help with stool control. They become a disease when swollen or inflamed; the unqualified term ''he ...
and other
civil structures. Commercial operations began in December 2015 shortly after the delivery of first electricity to the
grid
Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to:
Space partitioning
* Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs
** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...
.
The facility is sited adjacent to a San Luis Valley
substation
A substation is a part of an electrical Electricity generation, generation, electric power transmission, transmission, and electric power distribution, distribution system. Substations transform voltage from high to low, or the reverse, or pe ...
and has been planned to accommodate a future 100 MW expansion.
Electricity production
See also
*
San Luis Valley Solar Ranch
*
Solar power in Colorado
Solar power in Colorado has grown rapidly, partly because of one of the most favorable net metering laws in the country, with no limit on the number of users. The state was the first in the nation to establish a Renewable Portfolio Standard for i ...
*
Solar power in the United States
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2024, utility-scale solar power generated 218.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in the United States. Total ...
*
Renewable energy in the United States
A renewable resource (also known as a flow resource) is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a finite amount of t ...
*
Renewable portfolio standard
A renewable portfolio standard (RPS) is a regulation that requires the increased production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. Other common names for the same concept include Renewable Electric ...
External links
VIDEO: SunPower Robotic Panel Cleaning
References
{{Solar power in the United States
Buildings and structures in Alamosa County, Colorado
Photovoltaic power stations in Colorado
Photovoltaic power stations in the United States
Energy infrastructure completed in 2015