First Solar drops 150 MW project in Colorado

Reuters, Wednesday December 23 2009
* Solar co withdraws application from federal agency
* Proposed project to have generated 150 MW of electricity
* Shares of First Solar close down 1 percent
LOS ANGELES, Dec 22 (Reuters) - U.S. solar power company First Solar Inc has dropped plans to develop a 150 megawatt solar power project in Colorado, the company said on Tuesday, shifting its focus to "higher priority projects."
Tempe, Arizona-based First Solar is one of the world's largest solar module makers and has more than 1.5 gigawatts of power projects in its pipeline.
The company on Dec. 17 withdrew its application with the Bureau of Land Management to build the project across 2,100 acres of high desert in Colorado's San Luis Valley, said Steven Hall, a spokesman with the federal agency in Colorado.
Withdrawing the application lets First Solar work on higher-priority and "nearer-term" projects, company spokesman Alan Bernheimer wrote in an email.
He later added that the company is reviewing its portfolio to see which projects have the highest priority based on factors like transmission capacity.
The proposed 150 MW project was part of the pipeline of utility-scale solar farms that First Solar acquired when it bought rival OptiSolar earlier this year.
The federal agency said on Tuesday that it also denied applications for four other projects by First Solar in Barstow, California that together total about 2.5 gigawatts.
Wedbush Morgan analyst Christine Hersey said that investors should take note even though First Solar has not spent large sums on developing these projects beyond its purchase of OptiSolar's pipeline.
"Some of these U.S. large scale projects may be a little bit more difficult to develop than investors realize," Hersey said.
First Solar has the lowest production costs in the industry. Its cadmium telluride-based panels that convert sunlight to electricity are cheaper to make, but less efficient than traditional silicon-based panels.
First Solar's shares closed down 1 percent at $135.50 in trading on Tuesday on the Nasdaq.
(Reporting by Laura Isensee; Editing by Robert MacMillan, Phil Berlowitz)