Mayor, DWP Sign Deals For Solar Power Project On Tribal Land

CBSLA.com) ^ | December 7, 2012 9:50 AM | Pete Demetriou

[BenLurkin]

EAGLE ROCK (CBSLA.com) — Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa [aka Tony Vilar] and the Department of Water & Power have signed an agreement to purchase power from a solar panel project built on Native American tribal land.

KNX 1070′s Pete Demetriou reports the city will join Sempra Energy and the Moapa Band of Indians to develop long-term renewable energy sources.

Villaraigosa was joined by DWP Board Chairman Tom Sayles at the Solar Array project at Occidental College on Thursday for the signing of two city ordinances that approve large long-term solar power purchasing contracts for the DWP.

The development of the K-Road and Copper Mountain solar sites in Nevada are expected to provide 460 megawatts of clean solar power – enough to run over nearly 200,000 homes – within the next four years.

Sayles said the utility considers solar energy to be a major component of its long-term operations strategy.

“It means increasing our renewable energy to 33 percent by 2020, balancing our power with natural gas, and of course, limiting our dependence on coal,” he said.

DWP ratepayer advocates have signaled support for the projects and estimated it would cost residential users less than a $1.40 a month over the term of the agreements.

The DWP will be the sole recipient of solar power from the 25-year contract with K Road Moapa Solar, which will be located on Moapa Band of Paiute Indians tribal land north of Las Vegas.

Tribal Chairman of the Moapa Band of Paiutes William Anderson gave his support for the project as well.

“How can we be more responsible to our people, to our environment, and how can we go ahead and set that example to go ahead and provide an alternate way of providing energy? What better way than working solar?” Anderson said.

The two contracts along with the 250 megawatt Adelanto solar array and the groundbreaking future 150 megawatt Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) program will ultimately allow the DWP to provide enough green energy annually to serve approximately 330,000 households in Los Angeles.

[rktman]

Occidental? Sounds familiar to me. Oh, uncle obie went there. No connection I’m sure.

Share the lead.

[palmer]

DWP ratepayer advocates have signaled support for the projects and estimated it would cost residential users less than a $1.40 a month over the term of the agreements.

Great, some shills support expensive unreliable energy. It could be worse, southern Nevada has lots of sun and the lucky indian tribe can keep themselves busy wiping the dust off the panels. A 250 MW plant means 250 Megabucks at a buck a watt (which would be cheap for solar PV and not take into account mounting and connecting the panels). A coal plant might also cost a megabuck per megawatt also but there's a big difference in duty cycle. The solar produces rated power a couple hours a day, less the rest of the day and nothing for the bulk of a 24 hour period. The coal plant produces rated power 95% of the time. The coal costs some money of course.