Three Major Solar Projects for NC

After years of false starts, large-scale solar power is scheduled to come to North Carolina.

Progress Energy is planning a 1.2-megawatt solar farm on 10 acres in Wilmington, to be built at the same complex as the utility's coal-burning power plants, it announced Friday. The solar farm could generate enough power for about 800 homes on sunny days. It is expected to start generating electricity this year. The Progress Energy solar project will be developed, owned and operated by SunEdison, a national solar developer in Maryland. SunEdison will sell the power it generates to Progress, which will then redistribute the electricity to its customers.

SunEdison announced two other solar projects in the state this year:
* a 1-megawatt project on the Cary campus of software developer SAS, which will sell power to Progress.
* a 16-megawatt solar farm in Davidson County that will sell power to Duke Energy.

The Davidson County project appears puny compared with the 900-megawatt Shearon Harris nuclear plant in Wake County, but it's colossal by solar standards. The nation's largest solar project is about 14 megawatts, at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

North Carolina, a state where solar energy has never been adopted on a large scale, is suddenly developing three significant solar projects. "It's about time," said Stephen Kalland, director of the N.C. Solar Center at N.C. State University. "The technology has been there for some time." The interest in solar in this state is being driven by a 2007 state law requiring that power companies tap renewable resources. The law may elevate North Carolina to a national solar hot spot; utilities must develop an estimated 300 megawatts of solar power by 2021 to meet the renewables standard, Kalland said.

Progress Energy, Duke Energy and municipal power agencies are all reviewing proposals from developers of renewable power, including solar, wind and biomass resources. Duke plans to develop its own statewide solar power network on about 850 sites, primarily rooftops.

North Carolina's potential for 300 megawatts is likely to look less impressive over time. An 800-megawatt solar proposal is in the works in California. That project would put solar power on the same scale as the behemoths of energy -- nuclear power plants and coal-burning plants. Today, North Carolina has less than a half-megawatt of solar power, mostly rooftop projects on private homes that are subsidized by NC GreenPower, a Raleigh nonprofit group that has been supporting solar projects since 2004. NC GreenPower has 167 solar projects; many are so small that they don't generate enough power for one home.

The high cost of silicon wafers and rising demand for silicon by the computer chip industry have been major impediments to solar development. Generating solar energy once cost about five times as much as building conventional power plants, putting solar out of reach unless it was heavily subsidized. The cost of nuclear power is soaring, but solar power is still about twice as costly as nuclear, Kalland said.

North Carolina regulation of utilities presents another obstacle to solar. Solar developers such as SunEdison are not allowed to sell electricity to businesses or homes. They can only sell to power companies, which in the past were unwilling to invest in solar energy, because it was expensive. Solar systems produce emissions-free electricity without greenhouse gases or radioactive nuclear waste. The downside is that solar power operates only about 20 percent of the time, compared with nuclear and coal plants that run around the clock.

The financial terms of the SunEdison contracts are confidential, and utility officials declined to discuss how much they are paying for solar. Progress spokesman Mike Hughes said other factors necessary for solar development include negotiating for land, and often, providing connections to transmission lines. "It's one of the technologies where price has come down and likely will continue to come down," Hughes said.

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John Murawski, Staff Writer
News & Observer
john.murawski@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-8932