Big companies sign agreement for more solar power through SRP

Salt River Project announced on Tuesday a new solar plant to provide renewable energy to large customers including Apple, PepsiCo, Target, Boeing and Dignity Health.

The new plant will be built in Eloy by a Utah company called sPower and should be running by next year. The 100megawatt plant will generate enough power to supply about 25,000 homes at once when the sun is shining. The plant will be called Central Line Solar.

The plant helps the public electric and water utility meet the growing demand for renewable energy from its biggest customers, officials said.

In this deal, SRP approached some of its largest commercial customers, who will pay for the power generation and distribution, as well as the administrative costs of the project, said Steve Lopez, senior director for customer strategy at SRP.

“I think there is some customers that would have taken more (solar power),” he said. “The idea was that we wanted to make it impactful to them. We wanted to move the needle on their sustainability goals.”

SRP will not own the power plant. Residential customers will therefore not pay any costs associated with the project, Lopez said. The participating companies and government bodies agreed to 15-year deals for the plant’s power.

SRP has long advocated that large, centralized solar power plants are the most cost-efficient way to add renewable energy to the power grid. The solar panels at the plant will use a single axis to track the sun as it moves across the sky, which can yield as much as 30% more power than stationary panels.

SRP would not disclose the price for the power from the plant but said it is in line with low solar prices seen across the region in recent years.

“Solar (prices) in general we’ve seen dropping 80% in the last eight years,” Lopez said.

The participating companies can count the renewable-energy credits from the solar energy toward their corporate goals. SRP will need to get less power from natural-gas plants to serve those customers, helping it meet its carbon-reduction goals.

SRP pledges to reduce carbon emissions by 60% in 2035 and by 90% in 2050, based on 2005 levels.

“Entering into long-term contracts

that help fund net-new sources of renewable energy is at the core of our renewable energy strategy,” said Richard Henderson, head of corporate properties at Wells Fargo, one of the project participants. “SRP’s renewable energy offering is an innovative way for Wells Fargo to meet our operational sustainability goals while supporting the communities where we work and live.”

The city of Tempe, which has its own goal to be carbon neutral by 2050, also is a participant.

So is Arizona State University, which has several solar installations of its own across its campuses.

“This utility-scale, renewable energy agreement is another important piece in our ongoing push to eliminate the university’s carbon footprint,” said Gerry DaRosa, director of ASU’s Energy Innovations.

SRP announced in 2018 it would develop 1,000 megawatts of solar power through purchase agreements with developers like sPower, which build and own the plants and sell it to SRP.

Three large projects have been announced since then:

East Line Solar, a 100-MW, solar plant to be built in Coolidge by sPower to provide power to the Intel facilities in Chandler. The project has broken ground and is scheduled for operation at the end of 2020.

Saint Solar to be built by NextEra Energy Resources LLC in Coolidge for 11 of SRP’s commercial customers, has broken ground and is scheduled to operate at the end of 2020.

Central Line Solar, a 100-MW, solar plant to be built in Eloy by sPower for 21 SRP commercial customers. It is scheduled to operate in December 2021 and should break ground next year.

The SRP customers participating in

iiithe latest deal are Apple, Arizona State University, Boeing, CenturyLink, Chandler Unified School District, Circle K, City of Tempe, Cox Communications, Dignity Health, General Dynamics Missions Systems, Gilbert Public Schools, Matheson Tri-Gas Inc., PepsiCo, Resolution Copper Mining, Salt River PimaMaricopa Indian Community, Target Corp., Town of Gilbert, United Dairymen of Arizona, Verizon Communications Inc., Wells Fargo Bank, and one entity that declined to be identified, according to SRP.