PacifiCorp on Thursday said it will build a 2-megawatt solar-electric installation 1 1/2 miles from downtown Lakeview this year.

The project will comprise 9,000 solar panels to be built on 21 bare acres and provide electricity for about 400 typical residential customers, according to a news release from the Portland-based utility company. The company is billing the installation as “the largest utility-leased solar facility in the state.”

The project’s developer, Obsidian Finance Group LLC of Lake Oswego, will break ground in May. Power is expected to flow from the site by October, the news release said.

The land is adjacent to a PacifiCorp transmission line, company spokesman Tom Gauntt said.

“(That’s), no doubt, some of its attractiveness,” Gauntt said.

PacifiCorp in November 2010 issued a request for proposals for a new solar source in Oregon that could generate between 500 kilowatts and 2 megawatts of electricity.

The request said PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, was seeking solar power to comply with Oregon law mandating that electric companies produce at least a combined 20 megawatts of solar power by 2020.

No one facility in the state can generate more than 5 megawatts, the statute states. PacifiCorp must produce 8.7 megawatts.

The Lakeview installation is the company’s first move toward the 8.7 megawatts, Gauntt said.

PacifiCorp declined to say how much the Lakeview project, nicknamed Black Cap, will cost.

Pacific Power, a subsidiary of PacifiCorp, supplies electricity to about 550,000 customers in Oregon, Gauntt said, including some in the central, northeastern and southern parts of the state.

In Christmas Valley, ranchers and other landowners opposed to building solar arrays in the area founded the group Concerned Citizens of North Lake County, according to The Bulletin’s archives.

But Brad Winters, chairman of the Lake County Board of Commissioners, has not heard any negative comments about PacifiCorp’s solar installation, even during hearings associated with land use and vacation of roads.

“This is a very, very positive thing,” Winters said.

The county has approved land-use proposals for other solar developments in Lake County, he said.

“It’s up to the investor-developer to go from there,” Winters said.