SDG&E officially alerted state regulators Thursday that it met a goal to buy 20 percent of its power from renewable sources, a year later than hoped for, a utility official said.
The state goal had been to meet the 20 percent goal by 2010, but no utility made it. In 2002, SDG&E bought 0.5 percent of its electricity from solar, wind or biomass, said Jim Avery, SDG&E’s senior vice president for power supply. Avery said construction of a high-capacity transmission line to Imperial County, called the Sunrise Powerlink, made a huge difference.
“There’s not a single fossil (fuel) generator that’s lined up to use Sunrise,” Avery said. “Once people saw there was certainty behind it, it has created a wealth of opportunities, so much so we have truly been able to pick and choose.”
The utility took a big leap this year by signing a contract to buy power from a wind generation plant in Riverside County owned by Shell and Goldman Sachs which provides 5 percent of its overall supply, a quarter of the electricity it needed to meet the renewable goal.
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