Yesterday (March 17), SunPower and Xcel Energy announced the completion of the 19-megawatt Greater Sandhill solar power plant in the San Luis Valley of Colorado. The plant is the largest photovoltaic plant in the state.

The array provides enough power to meet the annual electric needs of nearly 5,000 Xcel customers. It was completed on Dec. 22, 2010, and has been operational since then, said SunPower spokesperson Ingrid Ekstrom. The project was completed on schedule within a period of nine months. It was financed in part by MetLife and John Hancock Financial Services.

The photovoltaic modules are mounted on SunPower’s Tracker systems, which help reduce the amount of land used for the array. Since the panels track the sun, they’re able to produce up to 25 percent more electricity, according to SunPower.

“Colorado’s a great market for solar,” Ekstrom said. SunPower’s photovoltaics are already installed at some other projects high profile site in the state, like Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, a housing development near Stapleton and more. But, “This is our first utility-scale project in Colorado,” she said.

"Xcel Energy is pleased to provide solar energy from Greater Sandhill to our customers and eagerly anticipates adding more solar power in the San Luis Valley in the near future," Tom Imbler, Xcel’s vice president of commercial operations, said in a press release.
The company will soon dwarf the project with the 30 megawatt plant that it is building at San Luis Valley Solar Ranch, which should be fully operational by the end of this year, the company said. The new installation will be located on 216 acres of former agricultural land on the ranch. The solar ranch is being developed by Iberdrola Renewables, which will sell the power to Xcel energy through a power-purchase agreement.

During construction phases, both plants created roughly 100 jobs. Now that the Greater Sandhill project is complete, it has one full-time maintenance operator, Ekstrom said. The company has not announced any other utility-scale projects in Colorado at this point.

Image courtesy of SunPower.