Original Carrizo Solar Power Plant Site, California

The remote and sunny Carrizo Plain was selected as the location for the first industrial scale photovoltaic solar power plant in the nation. It operated from 1983 to 1994, and during that period was by far the largest photovoltaic array in the nation, if not the world, with 100,000 1' x 4' photovoltaic arrays producing 5.2 megawatts at its peak. The plant was originally constructed by the Atlantic Richfield oil company (ARCO). During the energy crisis of the late 1970s, ARCO became a solar energy pioneer, manufacturing the photovoltaic arrays themselves. ARCO first built a 1 megawatt pilot operation, the Lugo plant in Hesperia, California, which is also now closed. The Carrizo Solar Corporation, based in Albuquerque, NM, bought the two facilities from ARCO in 1990. The Carrizo Solar Company dismantled this 177-acre installation in the late 1990s, as the panels were said to be impaired by a design flaw that caused them to lose output. The used panels were resold, and many are still in use in small domestic installations. It was a solar plant before its time. Two decades later, the site was developed into the largest solar power plant in the USA, during the “solar boom” that started with government incentives and mandates in 2011.