On Thursday, April 8, Florida Power & Light (FPL) officials joined those from NASA to celebrate the powering up of a 10-megawatt solar field array at the Kennedy Space Center near the Cape Canaveral Air Station. The solar field array wrapped up two months ahead of schedule and $8 million below budget.

Called the Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center, it represents a unique public/private partnership between the utility and the foremost U.S. space agency, and according to spokespersons demonstrates both entities’ commitment to a clean energy future.

The facility, sited on 60 acres, is comprised of about 35,000 SunPower Corp. high-efficiency solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, which allows the facility to generate up to 50 percent more energy per panel than many other conventional solar panels on the market.

San Jose, California-based SunPower Corp. is a solar design/build firm that makes solar panels, solar roof tiles and solar cells. Founded in 1985, the company recently saw a downturn as a result of what it described as an accounting error, but the successful, early launching of the Space Coast Center, under budget no less, should see an upswing in both consumer confidence and installation requests.

The 10 megawatts at the Kennedy Space Center are enough to power about 1,100 homes with clean, renewable solar energy, which in turn will prevent more than 227,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions over its lifetime. This, according to the Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is the same as taking 1,800 cars off Florida roads each year.

In addition to this solar field, SunPower also designed and built a separate, one-megawatt solar power system at Kennedy Space Center, and is responsible for FPL's 25-megawatt DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in DeSoto County, which is currently the nation’s largest operating solar PV facility.

Later in 2010, FPL projects opening the world's first hybrid solar thermal facility, the parabolic trough Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Indiantown, which is designed to work in conjunction with an existing fossil fuel plant, the 3,705-megawatt Martin County Power Plant, which runs on natural gas. At 75 megawatts, it will become the largest of FPL's solar facilities.

SunPower has also stated its intent to locate an R&D facility employing up to 50 people in Florida if the state government continues to support large-scale solar projects (and, presumably, if and when SunPower gets past its slump).