The 1,000 megawatt (MW) solar project, approved for construction on federal land in South California, will be the largest solar venture planned in the US. The Bureau of Land Management has given it the “go ahead”.
The $4bn (around €5.5bn) Blythe Solar Power Project will generate enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes and will be spread out over 7,000 acres of land in California.
More megawatts
When completed, the Blythe Solar Project would nearly double the 585MW of installed commercial scale solar generation in the US and would have the ability to generate three times the electricity produced at the country’s largest solar facility in Kramer Junction, California.
The first phase of the project is expected to start generating energy by 2013 but the overall project is expected to take up to six years to complete.
The Blythe Solar Project signifies that the US is beginning to consider solar energy as a viable and strong alternative, and the project is expected to generate somewhere in the region of 1,000 jobs – more than 200 of which will be permanent.
