The North American Development Bank (NADB) and Grupo T-Solar Global S.A. announce the signing of a US$67.6 million loan with Sol Orchard Imperial 1, LLC for the construction of a 20-MWAC photovoltaic solar park located in the city of El Centro in Imperial County, California. The electricity produced by the project will be purchased by Imperial Irrigation District (IID), organized and operated under the Water Code of State of California to provide water and power to all of Imperial County and portions of Riverside and San Diego counties.

The project, certified by the Border Environment Cooperation Commission (BECC) on April 8, 2013, will be constructed on approximately 131 acres of land owned by IID. This project is part of IID’s plan to comply with California’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires publicly owned utilities (POUs) to adopt the RPS goal of 20 percent of retail sales from renewable sources by the end of 2013, 25 percent by the end of 2016, and 33 percent by the end of 2020. The solar panels for the project will be supplied by Yingli. STi Norland will provide the single-axis trackers, GPTech will supply the inverters, and engineering, procurement, and contracting services (EPC) will be rendered by Isolux USA.

The solar park is expected to generate enough electricity to power approximately 14,000 households.

Environmental benefits related to this project include the estimated displacement of approximately 13,678 metric tons of carbon dioxide and 21 metric tons of nitrogen oxide annually.

NADB is providing US$311 million in loan financing for eight utility-scale solar projects in California, Arizona and Texas. When completed, these projects will have an installed generation capacity of 96 MWAC .