Huge solar farms proposed in Valley

Published online on Monday, Sep. 21, 2009

A pair of solar farms proposed for the Panoche Hills of western Fresno County and eastern San Benito County could become the biggest installations of their kind in the world.

Solargen Energy Inc., based in Cupertino, has submitted an application to Fresno County planners for its Panoche Ranch Solar Farm on 2,600 acres of rangeland near the Little Panoche Reservoir. Solar photovoltaic panels spread across the acreage would produce up to 250 megawatts of electricity.

A few miles down Little Panoche Road, across the San Benito County line, Solargen has proposed an even larger project in the Panoche Valley, where solar panels could occupy as much as 10,000 acres and generate up to 1,000 megawatts of power.

If - and it's a big if - the projects are built, the 1,250 megawatts of electricity generated would dwarf the output of any other solar photovoltaic installation currently operating anywhere in the world. The largest such project now is a 266-acre spread of panels near Olmedilla de Alarcon, Spain, which produces 60 megawatts of electricity in peak daylight hours.

Solargen's plans are the latest - and largest - to emerge to harvest Central California's abundant sunlight to generate electricity without creating pollution.

But they're likely to face opposition from groups concerned about endangered species and Panoche Valley residents who don't want millions of solar panels dotting their scenic valley.

Ideal location?

Solargen CEO Michael Peterson said the sites are well-suited to large-scale solar production - even more so than the floor of the San Joaquin Valley, which can be blanketed in winter fog.

That means the solar potential of the two sites is about 90% of what it is in the scorching Mojave Desert, Peterson said.

Other factors are existing Pacific Gas & Electric Co. high-power transmission lines that cross overhead, offering a ready connection to the power grid; and the relative isolation of the two sites. "There's not a huge population and not a huge disturbance," Peterson said.

A pair of solar farms proposed in the Panoche Hills would produce up to 1.25 gigawatts of electricity.

View Solar "farms" proposed in a larger map

Documents submitted to Fresno County planners indicate that the smaller of the two projects would install more than 1.2 million solar panels. The 2-by-4-foot panels would be arranged in rows, tilted to face south, and held aloft about four to five feet off the ground by single-pole steel supports. The rows of panels would be spaced as much as 15 feet apart.

Underneath the panels, native plants and grasses would be grown, kept in check with seasonal grazing by sheep.

The entire property, which is uninhabited by humans and is used as grazing rangeland, covers more than 2,600 acres. About 1,000 acres would be used for the solar project. That includes a 16-acre substation that would tie the electricity into PG&E's transmission lines.

The rest of the land would be preserved as habitat for threatened and endangered species, including the San Joaquin kit fox, giant kangaroo rat and the blunt-nosed leopard lizard.

The larger project in San Benito County, if built out to its maximum, would install more than 3.5 million solar panels over about 10,000 acres. At that size, it would be able to produce 1,000 megawatts of power. But Peterson said it's more realistic to expect the installation to be smaller.

Even at half the maximum size, with an electrical output of about 500 megawatts, the San Benito County project would still be far larger than any other solar-panel operation today.