Buffett holding makes California solar purchase
Projects expected to create 650 contruction jobs
MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a unit of Warren Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway, has purchased two solar power projects in a deal valued at between $2 billion and $2.5 billion.
MidAmerican, the electric utility, said Wednesday it has purchased the Antelope Valley Solar Projects from SunPower Corp.
Based in Los Angeles and Kern in California, the projects convert energy from light into electricity. The companies said the combined projects are the largest solar photovoltaic power development in the world.
The projects are still under development, and are expected to be completed by the end of 2015. They are expected to create 650 construction jobs.
SunPower’s stock price surged 20 percent at the open of trading Thursday.
As the nation slowly emerges from the Great Recession, the economic numbers for the Antelope Valley show a much higher rate of sustained unemployment and devalued housing prices in both Lancaster and Palmdale.
The five-year economic downturn saw much of the area’s the job losses come from the construction industry and retail sales. At the beginning of the year, Lancaster had an unemployment rate of 14.4 percent while Palmdale fared better at 11.1 percent. In 2008 the two cities lost a little fewer than 1,000 jobs combined, according to a 2009 report.
Owners of single-family homes in Lancaster may be required by January 2014 to have solar power systems in operation. It is a unique proposition posed by Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris to position the city as the nation’s foremost “green” community. This motion will be taken up for debate at the March 26 meeting of the Lancaster City Council.
LOS ANGELES, Calif.—The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is a step closer to launching a pilot program that will allow customers to sell their excess solar energy to the utility for delivery to the rest of the city, a spokesman said today.
The LADWP announced that after receiving 26 submissions, the application period to be a part of the feed-in tariff, or FiT, program was closed.
BOSTON, Mass.—Billionaire Warren Buffet, who is nearly 82 years old, announced that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
“I discovered the cancer because my PSA level recently jumped beyond its normal elevation and a biopsy seemed warranted,” Buffet explains. Diagnosed with stage 1 prostate cancer, he has chosen radiation treatment five days a week for six weeks.
The social networking powerhouse Facebook will offer its Initial Public Offering (IPO) this month with a share price of $28 to $35, according to an the United State Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) report. That would set the company’s total value as high as $86.6 billion, although it is expected that the price will rise before the company finally goes public.
