Antelope Solar
The two projects under scrutiny are Antelope Solar Valley Ranch in California and Agua Caliente in Arizona. Exelon Corp., based in Chicago, bought Antelope, and NRG Energy Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey, purchased Agua Caliente immediately after First Solar won the awards.
The projects, which will use solar panels produced by First Solar, are different than Solyndra, which won the loan guarantee to build a manufacturing plant. The First Solar loan guarantees are to build a solar field to produce electricity and already have utilities signed on to buy the power.
Projects tied to utilities carry less risk of default than Solyndra, according to an analysis of the loan guarantee by Herbert Allison, a former Treasury Department official. The Obama administration ordered the review amid Republican criticism of the Solyndra award.
"From the outset of the Obama administration's energy loan programs, red flags were raised about the risk to taxpayers, and a process open to mismanagement, abuse and missed opportunities -- with taxpayers underwriting the risk and paying the bill," Issa said.
Carbon Copy
In one e-mail cited by Republicans, which will probably be discussed at the hearing today, Dong Kim, the loan program's technical director, said the Antelope project's use of single axis tracker wasn't innovative. The technology allows the solar panels to track the sun throughout the day.
"The record will show that we did not grade this as innovative during intake review," Kim wrote in the June 23 e- mail.
Jonathan Silver, then the executive director of the loan program, in an e-mail dated Feb. 1, 2011, referred to the projects as alike in design.
"Where are we with antelope valley?" Silver asked energy official David Frantz. "Isn't that a carbon copy of agua caliente?"