The solar plant will generate 135MW of power, which will be transferred to Southern California Edison’s customers, under a long-term power purchase agreement.
SunPower intends to own and operate the solar power plant during construction, as part of its recently announced holdco strategy.
SunPower president and CEO Tom Werner said: "The advantages of SunPower’s technology, combined with our global footprint of more than four gigawatts of operating solar systems, give us confidence to deploy a holdco strategy with regard to Quinto.
"This strategy allows SunPower to realize the return on investment from the leading power-producing performance of our technology, and reduces the risk to potential buyers if we decide to sell the operational plant."
The company, under the holdco strategy, also aims to improve project margins and drive higher shareholder returns through the material benefit of its lower system degradation rates, long term project life as well as benefitting from distributions from the project as an equity owner.
During the peak construction of the project, SunPower expects that about 295 jobs will be created with approximately $80m in local economic impact.
Additionally, the project is expected to generate more than $5m of tax revenues while generating enough electricity for 40,000 homes.
The project is slated to be completed in late 2015.
Image: SunPower breaks ground on 135MW Quinto solar plant in US. Photo: courtesy of dan / Freedigitalphotos.net.
