Utilities, IPPs, developers and investors jockey for solar plant ownership

Top of the list since 2010 is the French electricity company EDF; while the Californian utility Pacific Gas and Electric also has a portfolio of assets under its Utility Owned Generation Program. But the list includes a greater number of independent power producers (IPPs) such as NRG Energy, Canada’s Enbridge and Italy’s Rete Rinovabile (RTR). Other prominent players are pure financial investors, including Warren Buffet’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings; and solar project developers, who retain a portfolio of their own completed projects, like Enerparc, Saferay and AES Solar.

The top twenty owners ranked by the capacity of their 10MW+ installations are:

“Solar power generation is the fastest-growing sector of the global electricity market”, says Wiki-Solar’s Philip Wolfe, “and is attracting a broad range of investors. The top twenty owners we are listing today include utilities, IPPs, developers and investors who together own over 30% of the 8.3GW of capacity on our database.”

“It will be interesting to see if other utilities follow EDF and PG&E into this sector, especially after recent reports that the German utilities, which have been sceptical about renewable energy investments, are starting to lose control of their markets.”[1]

“The risers and fallers in the list partly reflect the geographical changes to the market reported last month, with the leading investors in Spain’s 2008 solar boom now slipping down the list”, said Wolfe.

Notes for editors:
The statistics for utility-scale solar projects of 10MW and over are collated by wiki-solar.org and published on its website at: http://www.wiki-solar.org/company.html. At present there are over 300 projects of this size worldwide. Wiki-Solar also maps these projects at: http://www.wiki-solar.org/map.html. Projects of 10MW are typically capable of providing an annual output equivalent to the consumption of 3,000 households.
The owners’ figures in the ranking list are derived from all projects in the database against which an owner is listed. The data may not be fully complete, and Wiki-Solar encourages companies to validate project information. Where several companies are listed against a project, the capacity is divided between them equally irrespective of the individual contributions.
The database includes a total of over 300 operational solar generating stations of 10MW and above, with a further 200+ sites under development (but not included in the figures, until they become operational).
Projects are now being developed at capacities up to ½ GW. The largest plant currently operating – and still under construction – is Agua Caliente in the South West corner of Arizona being developed and built for NRG Energy and MidAmerican Energy by First Solar. This topped 250MW in capacity in September and will eventually total over 300MW.
The book “Solar Photovoltaic Projects in the mainstream power market was published by Routledge in October.
[1] See this Reuters article, for example.

Photograph :
Enbridge’s Sarnia Solar Power Plant – the world’s largest until last October | Courtesy: First Solar