Dive Brief:
- Georgia Power's has signed power purchase agreements (PPA) to take generation from 10 proposed solar facilities, Platts reported. All of the generation will be completed by 2016.
- The Southern Co. utility subsidiary issued a request for proposals (RFP) in April seeking 495 MW of power, but inked deals for 515 MW, it revealed this week in regulatory documents.
- The price of solar is dropping, Georgia Power told regulators, with the smaller facilities supplying power for 2 cents/kWh less than yielded by a similar RFP in 2013.
Dive Insight:
The big news from Georgia Power's PPA filing with state regulators is how the price of solar generation continues to drop. While the utility did not specify the price of the power it would take from the larger solar projects, it told the Public Service Commission that from four smaller projects it would pay "less than 6.5 cents/kWh—2 cents below the cost achieved through the [utility's] 2013 solicitation," Platts quoted from the filing.
The larger projects will range from 31 MW to 101 MW. The four smaller projects will all come online next year, Georgia Power said, and the six larger projects—a combined 439 MW of power—will come online next year through 2016.
Two projects totaling 99 MW will be owned by Southern Power, a generating subsidiary also owned by Southern Company.
