PG&E Tripling Amount of Solar Power From Sempra’s Nevada Plant

PG&E Corp. (PCG), owner of California’s largest electric utility, agreed to triple the amount of solar power it will buy from a project Sempra Energy (SRE) is building in Nevada.

PG&E will buy 150 megawatts from Sempra’s Copper Mountain Solar 2 project located in Boulder City, Nevada, under a 25-year power contract, the San Francisco-based company said in a statement today.

Sempra is expanding its 48-megawatt Copper Mountain Solar 1 project, the largest photovoltaic plant in the U.S., the San Diego-based company said in a statement. Sempra expects to build 1,000 megawatts of renewable capacity by 2015, Chief Executive Jeffrey W. Martin said in the statement.

The first 92 megawatts of Solar 2 are expected to be installed by January 2013, with the remaining 58 scheduled by 2015, the companies said in the statement.

First Solar Inc. (FSLR), the world’s largest maker of thin-film panels, will also build the second phase of the project, the Tempe, Arizona-based company said in a statement. The ground- mounted panels will be installed in phases starting in early 2012.

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.