Biggest Solar Deal Signed

Pacific Gas & Electric, a California utility, announced Wednesday that it had agreed to purchase 1,310 megawatts of solar thermal power — enough to power 530,000 homes. BrightSource Energy will provide the technology — which consists of mirrors that use the sunlight to heat water and spin turbines — and plans to build facilities in California, Arizona and Nevada. It is a lot of juice — though it’s worth noting, as Mr. Woolard himself does, that today’s announcement is really just an expansion of an existing 900-megawatt deal that BrightSource signed with PG&E last year, which was then touted as the largest in the world. BrightSource also struck a 1,300 megawatt deal with Southern California Edison, another California utility, in February — which, to be sure, was described as the “world’s largest” at the time...NYTimes