OREANDA-NEWS. Berkshire Hathaway utility PacifiCorp will procure renewable generation from a 7MW solar installation in Oregon by the end of 2015.

The facility in Klamath County is scheduled to begin commercial operation later this year, following construction by regional solar developer Obsidian Renewables, PacifiCorp said.

PacifiCorp expects that the plant will supply power to about 1,000 residents in the town of Bly, Oregon. The company serves 1.8mn customers across Utah, Oregon, Wyoming, Washington, Idaho and parts of northern California.

The 7MW plant will be built on a former 40-acre lumber mill site, with 20,000 solar panels, and will become PacifiCorp's largest operational solar facility in Oregon. Obsidian previously built the 2MW Black Cap solar farm for PacifiCorp in 2012.

The Klamath project will help satisfy most of the utility's mandate to procure 8.7MW of solar capacity by 2020, as required under Oregon's Solar Capacity Standards law.

PacifiCorp parent company Berkshire Hathaway Energy has been making a push on renewables in recent months. The company, through its BHE Renewables and MidAmerican Energy subsidiaries, secured rights to about 950MW of wind capacity across Iowa and Nebraska for roughly \$1.5bn.

Berkshire Energy notified the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on 27 April that it has secured rights to 74 individual plots that could each contain 1MW solar systems in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator region, the filing said.