Solar and Wind Power

Two California companies said Thursday that they would each build solar power plants that were 10 times bigger than the largest now in service, creating the first true utility-scale use of a technology now mostly confined to rooftop supplements to conventional power supplies.

The solar power will be sold to Pacific Gas and Electric, which is under a state mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The utility said that it expected the plants, both using photovoltaic technology, which turns electricity directly into sunlight, would be competitive with other renewable sources, including wind and solar thermal, which uses the sun’s heat to boil water. To date, the only large plants have been solar thermal.

Solar power is more costly than wind, watt for watt, experts say, but delivers the energy at a time of day when electricity prices are higher and is more valuable even if it is more costly.

OptiSolar, a company that has just begun to make thin-film solar panels — with a layer of semiconductor material thinner than a human hair on the back of a glass panel — will install 550 megawatts in San Luis Obispo County, in central California. And the SunPower Corporation, which uses crystalline cells, will build 250 megawatts in the same county. The OptiSolar plant will cover about nine square miles and the SunPower plant about 3.5, although the actual cell area will be smaller.

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