Proposed Loan Guarantee to Support Construction and Startup of the Topaz Solar Farm, San Luis Obispo County, CA 

The US Department of Energy is proposing to issue a loan guarantee to Royal Bank of Scotland to provide funding to Topaz Solar Farms, Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) to construct and start up the Topaz Solar Farm, a nominal 550-megawatt photovoltaic solar energy generating facility. The facility would be located in unincorporated eastern San Luis Obispo County, California, approximately one mile north of the community of California Valley and six miles northwest of the Carrizo Plain National Monument. The proposed facility would consist of a solar field of ground-mounted PV modules, an electrical collection system that converts generated power from direct current to alternating current and delivers it to a Project substation for collection and conversion from 34.5 to 230 kV for delivery via a new on-site Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) switching station, and the PG&E switching station that interconnects the Proposed Project to PG&E’s existing Morro Bay to Midway 230-kV transmission line. The facility would generate over one million megawatt-hours of electricity per year, enough to power 160,000 California homes annually. Generated electricity would be sold to PG&E under a long-term power purchase agreement.