By Green Tech Lead Team : Pacific
Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation, announced that
it has added more than 220 megawatts of clean wind and solar power to its
generation mix in 2011 and signed contracts for future delivery of 463
megawatts of new renewable power, enough to meet California’s
environmental goals,
About 19 percent of PG&E’s electricity
sales in 2011 came from eligible renewable sources and anticipates reaching 20
percent this year. PG&E targeted to boost that figure to 33 percent by
2020.
“Our long-term commitment to renewable
energy continued to pay off last year as more projects came online, providing
our customers with some of the cleanest generation found in the United
States. We continue to encourage project developers to help us
meet California’s aggressive clean-energy goals as cost-effectively as
possible for our customers,” said Fong Wan, senior vice president for energy procurement at PG&E.
Last year, PG&E added 135
MW of new capacity online from five solar photovoltaic projects built by
independent developers. It also began producing power at three sites developed
by the utility itself in the Central Valley, for another 50 MW of capacity and
signed contracts for 200 MW of new solar power in coming years.
PG&E also added 37 MW of new wind
capacity online last year and signed two new contracts totaling 263 MW.
PG&E recently dedicated the
Colusa Generating Station, a 657-megawatt (MW) electric generating facility
near the community of Maxwell in Colusa County. It provides enough safe and
reliable energy to meet the needs of more than half a million PG&E
residential customers.