BUSINESS REVIEW

RENEWABLE ENERGY - SOLAR

Tessera Solar has rapidly built one of the more experienced renewable energy project development teams in North Americaand is well underway in its development of two of the world’s largest solar facilities in California; a 750MW Imperial Valley Solar Project near the Mexico border and a 850MW Calico Project in California’s Mojave Desert. Both projects have secured top-tier customers, made significant advancements in completing the permitting process and are on track to break ground as soon as 2010.

Tessera Solar will also begin construction of a 1.5MW reference plant in 2009, which will demonstrate the unique features of the second generation SunCatcher system prior to the beginning of the roll-out of the full-scale developments in 2010. In June 2009, Tessera Solar announced a 27MW project with Texas utility, CPS Energy, also scheduled to commence construction in 2010.

In addition to these projects, the company is developing a broad range of new facilities in California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada and it is expected that, by the end of the year, over 2,800MW of potential projects will be in development. Tessera Solar’s goal is to build a pipeline that supports over 600MW installation of new projects per year in North America.

The North American solar market is enjoying unprecedented growth as utilities strive to meet upcoming State and Federal renewable energy targets. However, the current challenges facing the global financial sector do raise challenges for securing project finance. Tessera Solar is well positioned for available project finance by having a well-proven technology ready to deploy, high quality projects ready to build, top-tier customers ready to buy power and unprecedented support from the US Government in the form of refundable Investment Tax Credits.