U.S. Offers Sempra Solar Plant $359.1 Million Loan Guarantee

Sempra Energy (SRE), California’s third- largest utility, received a $359.1 million conditional loan guarantee from the U.S. Energy Department to build a solar power plant in Arizona.

The company’s Sempra Generation unit is developing the 150- megawatt Mesquite Solar 1 plant in Maricopa County, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of Phoenix, the Energy Department said today in a statement.

The Mesquite project is expected to be complete in 2013 and will generate enough electricity for 56,000 homes, according to Sempra’s website. It will sell power to Pacific Gas & Electric Co., California’s largest utility under a 20-year contract.

Sempra Generation said in February that Mesquite would use 800,000 multicrystalline silicon solar panels from Wuxi, China- based manufacturer Suntech Power Holdings Co., the world’s largest solar-panel maker. Mesquite is the first phase of a planned 700-megawatt development. Sempra, of San Diego, has not said how much the project will cost.

The Energy Department has issued loans and guarantees or offered conditional loan guarantees totaling more than $33 billion to support 33 clean-energy projects. That includes more than $10 billion in loan guarantees for solar projects, according to the statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ehren Goossens in New York at egoossens1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net