Duke Energy Renewables has announced the commercial operation of its 150 MW North Rosamond solar project in Kern County, Calif.
North Rosamond represents the largest solar project in Duke Energy Renewables’ fleet. The facility is also the company’s sixth solar generation project in Kern County.
“North Rosamond is a great addition to our growing solar portfolio,” states Rob Caldwell, president of Duke Energy Renewables. “California is a leader in renewable energy, and we’re pleased to support the state’s efforts by continuing to provide cost-efficient renewable energy to meet residents’ needs.”
The project, which contains over 477,000 solar panels, is located on approximately 1,188 acres outside of Rosamond and will power roughly 71,000 homes. The energy is being sold to Southern California Edison under a 15-year agreement.
The project, which Duke Energy Renewables acquired from a subsidiary of Clearway Energy Group in April, employed as many as 500 individuals during peak construction.
The design; procurement of PV modules, inverters and balance-of-plant systems; and construction of the project were performed by First Solar Electric California’s engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) subsidiary under a fixed-price EPC agreement.
The U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corp., the tax credit division of U.S. Bank; M&T Bank’s Commercial Equipment Finance Group; and The Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America provided tax equity financing.
CIT’s Power and Energy group led a consortium of lending institutions that provided construction loan and ITC bridge loan facilities to fund equipment, engineering, construction and other costs needed to achieve final completion of the project. These facilities will be converted to a single-term loan facility that will be used to finance the project over the next 15 years.
Duke Energy is on track to own or purchase 8,000 MW of wind, solar and biomass energy by 2020.
