Silverado Energy of California was the big winner as Southern California Edison (SCE) awarded more than 250 megawatts (MW) of new contracts to renewable energy companies.

Silverado, along with venture partner Martifer Solar, signed nine power purchase agreements (PPAs) with SCE for a total of 113 MW of photovoltaic (PV) power generation in Los Angeles county. Silverado will soon start installing the PV, which should be operational in 2013.

Overall SCE awarded 20 contracts, totaling 259 MW of renewable energy generation under its Renewable Standard Contract program, adding even more renewable generation as the company moves forward to comply with California’s renewable portfolio standard.

This isn’t the first large-scale solar project supported by SCE. They’ve recently signed some other major power purchase agreements for solar, like the 370 MW Ivanpah project with BrightSource Energy, and the company’s been purchasing power from the 350 MW SEGS installation for more than 20 years, said Mike Marelli, director of contracts for SCE's Renewable and Alternative Power division.

“We have contracts for several thousands of megawatts [of solar],” he said. The company will continue to add more as it works to stay in compliance with California’s renewable portfolio standard.

“We are installing and developing the sites,” said Brad Meikle, cofounder and chairman of Silverado. “Martifer’s providing seed and development capital.”

According to Meikle, the company does some unique things like site control and a lot of research prior to developing its bids

“We won a bunch of projects because SCE likes the quality of the projects, and we have a high-quality development team,” he said. “We’re looking where the ideal areas are, and we take it through the construction phase.”

But the construction phase is no easy task.

“It’s a challenging process to develop these projects,” Meikle said. “Other companies take more of a shotgun approach…We’re more of a rifle shot approach, we’ll develop projects where we’ve already done due diligence. The due diligence really helps out a lot.”

And that due diligence paid off.

“They won and they submitted the best competitive bids in the marketplace,” said Marelli.

Marelli said the SCE required certain criteria to participate in the renewable standard contract program, like having an interconnection with the local grid.

“We got a huge response from the industry and selected the best projects out of the list,” he said.

Still, the awards to Silverado show that the solar industry is still open to relatively new companies.

“I co-founded the company a year and a half ago,” Meikle said. “We intend to grow it into a multi-gigawatt portfolio.”

Already the company has more than 400 MW of solar projects.

Pictured: Martifer's solar farm in Italy, courtesy of Martifer Solar.