Do you recall the Oscar winning “Erin Brockovich”, starring an outstanding Julia Roberts? Most probably yes. But less people would supposedly remember the name of the big corporation Erin fights and defeats: Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E).

The movie is indeed based on a true story: Erin Brockovic, a formerly unemployed single mother of three children working in a law firm, found out evidence that PG&E had been dumping (over a few years) 370 million gallons of cancer-causing chemicals into a series of ponds located in Hinkley, CA. The civil class-action managed by Erin brought to the largest settlement of its kind in the history of the United States: PG&E was requested to compensate the plaintiffs for $333 million! Further details about the trial are available here.

What I want to point out here is that perhaps something has changed, or at least history has been a good teacher… since today the same PG&E is one of the champions in the US race towards clean energy production.

Based on an agreement signed one year ago with two subsidiaries of OptiSolar and SunPower, PG&E will soon manage one of the world’s largest photovoltaic farm, for a total of 800 Mw. The farm will be located in San Luis Obispo County, about 100 miles north of Santa Barbara, CA.

What does 800 Mw practically mean? Well, that number is just a nominal figure, which should approximately indicate the solar panels “peak power” (the production achieved in ideal conditions). The efficiency of a solar installation is often indicated by measuring its total daily production in terms of equivalent peak hours. PG&E forecasts a production of 1.65 billion kilowatt-hours of renewable energy annually, which would be a daily average of 4520 megawatt-hours… like if the plant worked for about 5 hours and half per day at its peak power. Definitely not bad! About 240,000 residential homes can be completely served with this amount of energy, without any emission into the atmosphere.

Nobody’s so naive to believe PG&E has not considered its return on such an investment. But this is probably the best news at all! Making photovoltaic energy remunerative even before it reaches the grid parity, through proper incentives, is essential if we want to start right now building a cleaner future for our planet.