Saturday, December 17, 2011

Buffett's MidAmerican Makes 2nd Big Solar Investment

Warren Buffett really believes solar has a sunny future.  Fresh off buying a 500 plus megawatt solar farm last week, the Buffett-owned MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company bought a 49% share of the 290 megawatt, $1.8 billion Agua Caliente solar project in Arizona. http://www.solarbuzz.com/industry-news/midamerican-energy-acquires-interest-290-mw-solar-project.  NRG sold 49% of the project but retains the majority share.  First Solar is building the project for now NRG and MidAmerican.

Greg Abel, the CEO of MidAmerican, said of the latest purchase: "We are aggressively pursuing opportunities to expand our presence in the renewable energy sector and the Agua Caliente project is another important step toward that goal."

That quotation might make one think that MidAmerican currently has a small renewable energy position that it seeks to grow. Drawing that conclusion would be a mistake.  In fact, 28% of MidAmerican's electricity generation capacity is renewable or non-carbon.  It has one of the biggest wind generation fleets in the nation, and clearly intends to be a leading national, solar generating company as well.

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