Lockheed-Starwood solar plant construction will create many jobs - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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Last week’s announcement that and Global LLC were collaborating ona 290-megawatt facility abou t 75 miles west of Phoenix means Arizona contractors will get some of the said Chris Myers, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for energy The companies still are evaluating subcontractors for the proposesd $1.5 billion power plant, dubbecd Starwood Solar I. Some work, such as creating the mirroredx troughs that will focusthe sun’s typically is done by specialized companies, Myersw said, but there will be plenty more. “We’res going to do a lot of the work here in he said.
Steel manufacturing and other industries could benefit from an increaserd Arizona focus onsolar construction. Starwood and Lockheed Marti estimate 1,000 jobs will be created as a result of the and anadditional 6,000 coul result from supplier The companies plan to hold recruitment events this summetr to inform local companiesz about the opportunities, Myers said. In the meantime, the companyt is using a newly launchedWeb site, www.starwoodsolar.com, to distributd information and tell businesses how they can get involvesd with the project. The construction also will requir e infrastructure upgrades at transmission facilities to tie inwith Starwood’z facility.
Included in those upgrades will be work at Arizona PublicService Co.’s Delaney substation, which Starwoox will fund up front. APS, which has agreef to purchase power from thesolar plant, has fundss earmarked in its 2012 budgetf for expanding the Delaney substation. “To bring in something that there are going to have tobe improvements,” said Stephehn Zaminski, Starwood’s executive vice presideng and managing director. Starwood operates about 40 otherd power plants and owns all or part of several transmissio routes throughfive states. It began its partnershil with Lockheed about 18 months ago as both lookee for a site fora utility-scalew plant.
Starwood runs its solar operations via subsidiary NautilusaSolar LLC, which has done several large commercial-scalr projects, but nothing as big as what the two are attemptinv in the Harquahala Valley. The two companies believes their combined relationships with financial institutions will help them overcome the financing hurdles that have stalled several other solar projects. Some major project announcementss of the past few years have been delayed becaused companies that signeddeals couldn’t take the next step towardx developing a commercial product, said Madisojn Grose, vice chairman and senior managing directo r for Starwood.
“The folks who take it to commercialization have torealizde there’s a different skill set neede d to take it to the next level,” he Another hurdle is getting financial institutions and utilities comfortable enough with the solar concept that they view it the same way as traditional power plants, Grose said. The companies are plannintg to spend the summer conducting public meetings on the project with submissionsx to the ArizonaCorporation Commission, which must approvee the power purchase deal by this fall, said Brad CEO and managing director of Starwood.
The company hopes to get its building permits and ACC approvalz settledby mid-2010, get its financing in place and move forward with construction by the latterd half of that year, Nordholm said.