First Solar: PV Maker and Power Plant Operator
First Solar’s acquisition yesterday of the land option supporting the development of the 117-megawatt Carrizo Energy Solar Farm in California from Ausra was a long time coming.
The project, located in San Luis Obispo County and adjacent to the 550-megawatt Topaz photovoltaic power project, could act as a catalyst to finish that initiative at the expense of the Carrizo solar farm, which was announced in the summer of 2008 by OptiSolar. Since then, Topaz has been slowed by farm and environmental land concerns.
To generate electricity, Topaz will use the thin-film PV panels from First Solar. It is backed by a long-term power purchase agreement with San Francisco’s Pacific Gas and Electric. These factors make Topaz one of First Solar’s anchor projects as it transforms from a parts maker and supplier into a fully integrated green power company.
The companies did not disclose the financial terms.
As mentioned earlier, the sale by Ausra was expected and is a confirmation of the strategic shift announced by CEO Robert Fishman earlier this year. Unable to secure financing for its large utility scale projects, the company opted to concentrate instead on selling solar thermal systems for the distributed generation market.
This was a fundamental change for the company, which just a few years earlier, backed by Silicon Valley heavy weights Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Khosla Ventures, had left its native Australia for California, specifically to develop massive CSP projects.
To implement this more nimble strategy, last September Ausra hired COO Thomas Caulfield from chipmaker Novellus Systems.
Yesterday’s acquisition also confirms First Solar’s own transformation. As we wrote earlier in this post, long a “parts supplier,” the Tempe, Ariz., company is morphing into a fully integrated green energy business that produces thin-film PVs and builds and operates PV power plants.
That transformation began in early March with its $400 million acquisition of ailing OptiSolar and its 1,300-megawatt project pipeline, which included Topaz.
First Solar is definitely selective with its new generation assets. The Carrizo acquisition indicates a bias for Western-based projects with strong exposure to the California power market. Hence, last month the company announced the sale of a 20 megawatt solar farm in Sarnia, Ontario for C$100 million ($93.14 million) to Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline operator.
