Construction could begin by the end of this year on a 298-megawatt solar farm in Pueblo, Colorado.
The project will belong to the company Lightsource BP, which is based in London and has offices in both San Francisco and Philadelphia, among other locations.
By agreement, Lightsource will finance and build what is being called the Sun Mountain Farm, which upon completion, will provide power to the Minneapolis-based Excel Energy under a long-term power purchase agreement.
In turn, the power produced by the Sun Mountain Farm will be used by millions of homes and businesses in eight western and midwestern states.
To date, the project has gone through the site selection, preliminary design, permitting and environmental studies phase.
In a statement, Kevin Smith, chief executive officer of Lightsource, said the new Sun Mountain Farms project will “further contribute to the local jobs ecosystem and tax base while delivering cost-effective renewable energy for decades to come.”
Five years ago Lightsource made headlines when it launched the first floating solar project in Europe in Walton-on-Thames, England.
The company has additionally launched a 300-megawatt $285 million project, also in Pueblo, designed to power a steel mill belonging to Rocky Mountain Steel. That project is seeing the installation of more than 750,000 solar panels across an expanse of 1,800 acres.
Lightsource has said that it has a solar deployment target of 25 gigawatts by the year 2025.
By Garry Boulard
