Oregon Public Broadcasting

The Pacific Northwest's largest solar power station goes online this week.

The Wild Horse project sits on a mountain outside of Ellensburg. It's the same site that sports the largest wind project in Washington. Richland correspondent Anna King reports.

The solar project is designed to produce enough power to light up 300 homes.

That's tiny compared to wind power. In fact, the entire solar project only produces one third the energy of a single wind turbine. But solar panels produce power during the day when there is more demand for energy.

While wind farms mostly produce power during the evening and early morning.

Steve St. Clair: "And so a solar facility in conjunction with a wind facility is a very interesting match. Because we see the maximum generation when wind generation is beginning to subside."

That's Steve St. Clair with Puget Sound Energy, the utility company that owns the project.

It wants to have about 10 percent of its energy from alternative fuel sources by 2013.

St. Clair says the solar station is an experiment; the utility will look at the project's yield before building any others.