West Coast solar power could get a major boost if the California Energy Commission approves as many as six of 13 proposed utility-scale solar projects in Southern California’s Mojave Desert by year-end.
At a series of meetings in October and November, the CEC will consider authorizing construction for some of the largest solar installations since 354 MW went online in the 1990s. An additional 3,500 MW of capacity—an estimated $18 billion worth of installed capacity—could be added, testing recent advances in solar-trough and concentrating-thermal-power-tower technologies.