Friday, January 8, 2010, 1:45pm PST | Modified: January 11, 2010, 12:44 PM

Solar farm will be Oregon’s largest

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Obsidian Finance Group LLC plans to break ground in March on what will become Oregon’s largest solar energy development.

A financial advisory and investment firm, Tigard-based Obsidian in 2008 formed a subsidiary, Obsidian Renewables, to promote the development of renewable energy.

Its proposed 5-megawatt, $30 million project, dubbed Outback Solar, will spread 22,000 solar panels across 60 acres near the South Central Oregon town of Christmas Valley in Lake County. It would easily surpass the capacity of any other Oregon solar project.

Barring drastic reforms to the state’s Business Energy Tax Credit program, Obsidian has plans for two more similarly sized projects in Lake County this year. Combined, the three projects, stretched across 200 acres, would generate 15 megawatts of capacity — enough to power about 3,900 homes — and represents an investment that could reach $90 million.

And it could just be the start.

Obsidian owns more than 800 acres around Lake County.

David Brown, the senior principal at Obsidian, said the company remains first and foremost a financial services firm, not a developer of energy projects. Instead, it hopes to help foster development of its land by third-party developers, preferably through a public-private partnership.

“It’s our plan to be a sponsor of solar development,” he said.

The developments are in concert with a push by industry advocates to put solar technology on par with other utility-scale renewables.

High-capacity renewable energy has largely been the domain of hydro-electric dams and wind farms capable of generating hundreds of megawatts of power.

By comparison, solar energy projects are much smaller, in the single- and double-digit kilowatts. The largest operating solar energy development in the Northwest is a 500-kilowatt project owned by Puget Sound Energy in Central Washington’s Kittitas County, according to the Portland-based Renewable Northwest Project.

But that could soon be changing.

In addition to Obsidian, another 1 megawatt solar farm is under construction in Lake County, said County Commissioner Brad Winters.

Elsewhere in Oregon, a pair of 2 megawatt projects were proposed in 2008: one in Arlington by Vancouver, Wash.-based Columbia Energy Partners and another in Medford by Bend-based SunEnergy Power Corp.

In Washington, a group of private investors this summer unveiled plans for what has been called one of the world’s largest solar developments: a 75 megawatt project on 400 acres in Kittitas County called the Teanaway Solar Reserve.

Solar historically has been far more expensive to develop than wind farms. But a drastic reduction in materials costs — from raw silicon to completed panels — is helping spark the growth in large-scale projects.

Industry research firm New Energy Finance in November said the per-kilowatt cost of solar power — before subsidies — was expected to drop 50 percent by the end of 2009.

Brown said the cost of Obsidian’s Outback project fell 25 percent in the past year.

Large-scale solar developments are likely to benefit more from declining costs than smaller, residential jobs. That’s because they can more easily absorb the cost of labor, a project’s least variable expense, said Ethan Zindler, head of North American research at New Energy Finance.

So far, the heart of Oregon’s large-scale solar industry is centered around the Christmas Valley area of Lake County.