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Reporting on science, technology and innovation in Arizona and the Southwest through a collaboration from Arizona NPR member stations. This project is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.Additional stories from the Arizona Science Desk are posted at our collaborating station, KJZZ: http://kjzz.org/science

New Mega Solar Farm Will Be Built On Arizona-California Border

Amanda Solliday - KAWC

Blythe, California will soon become home to a 485-megawatt photovoltaic facility. The desert town of 20,000 people sits just west of the Colorado River, across from the Arizona border.

The Renewable Resources Group, an asset management firm, will oversee the building process.

The solar farm will sit on roughly five square miles of private land and supply energy to an estimated 145,000 homes in southern California.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) approved the project, because the transmission lines will cut across public lands. The solar farm is one of the largest renewable energy projects approved by BLM, said assistant secretary Janice Schneider.

This new solar farm is part of a Presidential push for renewable energy.

“In fact, over the past six years, the federal government has approved 34 commercial-scale solar projects, and the transmission infrastructure that goes with them, on public lands across the West," said President Barack Obama at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas on August 24.

"We approved one new project just today in California that will ultimately power another 100,000 plus homes,” Obama said, referring to the Blythe solar farm.

The federal government expects utility-scale solar capacity to increase by almost 100%, or 10 gigawatts, between 2014 and 2016, and estimates roughly 40 percent of this new capacity will be built in California.