The North American Development Bank (NADB) and Grupo T-Solar Global S.A. announced Aug. 20 the signing of a US$67.6m loan with Sol Orchard Imperial 1 LLC for the construction of a 20-MW (AC) photovoltaic solar park in the city of El Centro in Imperial County, Calif.
The electricity will be purchased by the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), which provides water and power to all of Imperial County and portions of Riverside and San Diego counties. The project, certified by the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) on April 8, will be constructed on about 131 acres owned by IID.
This project is part of IID’s plan to comply with California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires publicly owned utilities to adopt the RPS goal of 20% of retail sales from renewable sources by the end of 2013, growing to 25% by the end of 2016, and to 33% by the end of 2020.
The solar panels for the project will be supplied by Yingli. STi Norland will provide the single-axis trackers, GPTech will supply the inverters, and the engineering, procurement, and contracting services will be rendered by Isolux USA.
NADB is providing US$311m in loan financing for eight utility-scale solar projects in California, Arizona and Texas. When completed, these projects will have an installed generation capacity of 96 MW (AC). NADB is a financial institution established and capitalized in equal parts by the United States and Mexico for the purpose of financing environmental infrastructure projects along their common border.
Grupo T-Solar Global S.A. is a major independent power producer of photovoltaic solar electricity. A subsidiary of Isolux Infrastructure, it has 230 MW under operation in Spain, Italy, India and Peru, and 55 MW under construction in the United States.
