State regulators have reportedly approved a contract between Edison International's electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE) and plant developer eSolar for a solar facility, to be built in Kern County, California.

Approval by the California Public Utilities Commission allows Edison to recover the costs of the contract from its customers.

According to Dow Jones, the price of the power from eSolar's facility is considered above-market, and "Edison received commission approval to use special funds collected from utility customers to cover the extra amount". It shared that the solar plant will interconnect with the Southern California grid at a new substation that Edison plans to build as part of the Tehachapi renewable transmission project.

It was in June this year when eSolar, a producer of scalable solar thermal power plants, had signed a power purchase agreement with SCE to build a total of 245 megawatts of concentrating solar plants in the Antelope Valley region of Southern California.

The series of fully operational plants will begin production in 2011, it was shared then. But now one of the latest reports, filed by Los Angeles Business Journal, has indicated that the first of these solar power plants is set to come online in early 2012