On June 26, the final module at the California Valley Solar Ranch, the 250 megawatt project being developed by Bechtel Power Corp. for SunPower and NRG Energy, which owns the project, was installed. It’s one of the largest PV projects being built in the world and will soon be completely online.

“In the coming months, CVSR will be fully commissioned and generating enough power for approximately 100,000 homes in Pacific Gas and Electric’s territory,” NRG said in a statement. To be commissioned all the inverters, must be connected to grid and the system must be checked to make sure it’s operating properly.

The project has been coming online in stages, with more than half of it—130 megawatts—online by the end of 2012. Now that it’s closer to completion it’s moving into the final construction phases.

When SunPower first started work on the project it faced pushback from the local environmental community, with Carrizo Commons and North County Watch filing a lawsuit to halt the project. But as part of the project, SunPower also is protecting more than 12,000 acres of wildlife habitat for perpetuity through the project. The land set aside is intended to help grow the amount of land under protection on the Carrizo Plain. To resolve the lawsuit it also agreed to abandon the land after 50 years.

“The California Valley community has been a good neighbor, and we’re grateful for their support during construction of this important project – one of the world’s largest solar photovoltaic power plants,” NRG said. “We look forward to further strengthening those relationships as we move into the next phase of plant operations.”

Construction on the project began in September 2011 and should be completely online by the end of 2013. It shows how quickly utility-scale photovoltaics can be deployed. Whereas a typical coal-fired power plant can take well more than half a decade to build and commission before coming online. How fast a PV project of this magnitude gets completed and online really depends on how many people are working on the project. In terms of the CVSR project, SunPower has had more than 350 people working on the project during its peak construction.
  
Now that the panels are installed on this project, SunPower can focus on its other giant, utility-scale projects, like the 579 megawatt Antelope Valley Solar Projects (AVSP), which is owned by MidAmerican Solar and is selling power to Southern California Edison (SCE).

Meanwhile, First Solar’s Agua Calienete solar photovoltaic farm, a 290 megawatt AC project, already has 200 megawatts of solar power online and has had it online since last July. The remaining 90 megawatts will come online in 2014 as contracted. There are also a slew of giant PV projects in the works that are in various stages of completion or permitting processes.

*An earlier version of this story inccorectly listed SunPower as the firm building the project.