According to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, it has signed a 20 year agreement with Recurrent Energy for 60 megawatts of solar energy that will be produced in the southern portion of Sacramento County.
Recurrent Energy is expected to develop 12 separate 5 megawatt solar arrays that are set to be operational by fall 2012. These were said to be the first power purchase agreements from the utility's recently implemented feed-in tariff program.
"Distributed-scale solar has an important role to play in helping to meet near-term renewable energy goals," said Arno Harris, CEO of Recurrent Energy. "We have over 330 megawatts of distributed-scale projects in our contracted portfolio across North America and Europe, and these 12 solar power systems with SMUD are a clear validation of our approach to developing and marketing solar power in California."
Distributed solar projects tend to take up less space than other large-scale utility scale arrays, which helps to hold down costs while also reducing other potential difficulties like land acquisition and permitting.
