WELLS FARGO BACKS CONCENTRATING SOLAR

Wells Fargo invests for only one reason and it’s not because the investment is a good or environmental “cause.”

Wells Fargo Provides Company’s Largest-Ever Solar Energy Financing
August 16, 2007 (PR Newswire via Yahoo Finance)

WHO
Wells Fargo & Company (Barry Neal, director of Environmental Finance), Acciona Energy

Anybody who has been to Vegas won't have doubts about the insolation (sun saturation) at Nevada Solar One. (click to enlarge)

WHAT
Wells Fargo has invested in Nevada Solar One, a Nevada Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant.

WHEN
Nevada Solar One is expected to stabilize the region’s electricity rates, which have risen 50% since 2000.

WHERE
- Nevada Solar One is southeast of Las Vegas.
- Acciona is based in Spain.

WHY
- Nevada Solar One is a $266 million, 64 megawatt facility. Its power will be purchased by Nevada Power Company and Sierra Pacific Power Company and can supplement electricity supplies at peak demand periods. The long-term contracts make Wells Fargo’s investment especially sound.
- The financing has 3 equity investors: Wells Fargo, an affiliate of Northern Trust and JPMorgan Capital Corporation. Debt participants: Banco Santander, BBVA of Spain and CAIXA of Portugal.
- Nevada Solar One: 400 acres, 182,000 parabolic trough-shaped mirror panels. The mirrors track the sun, concentrating the heat onto tubes carrying fluid which flow to and heat water in a steam turbine that generates electricity. The output is considered a utility-scale, no-greenhouse gas emission source of power.

Nevada Solar One's parabolic mirrors with a fluid-filled tube running through to a steam generator. (click to enlarge)

QUOTES
- Neal: "Vast opportunity exists to help our customers and our nation take advantage of clean, renewable energy…Our goal is to seize the right opportunities by drawing from our breadth of financing capabilities to deliver solutions that benefit our customers, our communities, our shareholders and our environment."
- Article: “Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is the only bank in the U.S., and one of only two banks worldwide, to have the highest credit rating from both Moody's Investors Service…and Standard & Poor's Ratings Services…”