Producing local power

July 18, 2024

Over an annual average, Mendocino County now consumes about 1,500 megawatt hours of electricity every day. A single 400MW array, located within Mendocino County, would double our power, but a single array would be problematic, requiring connection to the high voltage transmission grid, and wouldn’t really relieve local power resilience concerns. A more versatile alternative would be a hundred 4MW arrays, distributed around the county. Over a decade, this works out to about one a month. Renewable Properties (www.renewprop.com) is a company that builds and operates distributed generation solar systems. They have successfully built systems within PG&E territory and are now developing two local arrays, near Ukiah and Laytonville. Sonoma Clean Power is negotiating to buy the power when production starts in late 2025. Renewable Properties (RP) has at least one more Mendocino county site in process, and is interested in finding more.