Big Solar Fights California County’s ‘Sun Tax’

A fight has broken out in Riverside County, Calif., that could impact the future of utility-scale solar power development in the United States. The county’s Board of Supervisors moved last November to impose an acreage-based fee on solar projects that could cost developers millions of dollars every year.

Now the developers have asked the Riverside County Superior Court to invalidate the fee—which they call the “Sun Tax”—claiming it violates California law.

Riverside County borders Orange County on the west and stretches some 200 miles east, all the way to Arizona. It’s a vast desert, prime country for massive installations that use photovoltaics or solar thermal technologies to produce hundreds of megawatts of power at peak output and feed it to the grid. We’ve written about many of the projects set for Riverside County, including a couple backed by federal loan guarantees—the 4,100-acre, 550-megawatt (MW) Desert Sunlight project and Genesis Solar, which would cover 1,950 acres and produce up to 250 MW of power.

image via First Solar

Under the scheme approved by Riverside’s Board of Supervisors, the owners of these plants would have to pay $450 for each acre they use to produce power, although according to the lawsuit [PDF], various credits and incentives could cut that amount in half. But do the math: Even at $225 per acre, a 4,100-acre project would be looking at charges of nearly $1 million a year.

The suit was brought by two organizations, the Independent Energy Producers Association and the Large-Scale Solar Association. The latter group’s membership reads like a who’s-who in solar development, including the likes of Abengoa, Amonix, BrightSource, NextEra, SunPower, Recurrent, First Solar, SunEdison and Torresol.

[source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Earthtechling/~3/O8u5fk9Q_Z4/]