Samsung C&T to build solar plants in California

SEOUL, S KOREA: South Korea's Samsung C&T Corpsaid on Wednesday it had agreed to build and run solar power plants in California for 25 years under a deal with utility PG&E.

Samsung C&T said in a statement under the project it would build five power plants by 2012 with a combined capacity of 130 megawatts, enough to power 40,000 homes. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

California hopes clean power will provide one-third of its electricity by 2020.

A consortium led by Samsung C&T last month won a C$7 billion ($6.7 billion) deal to build four wind and solar power clusters with total capacity of 2.5 gigawatts in Ontario, Canada.