Biz break: PG&E, SunPower announce major solar deal - San Jose Mercury News

Biz break: PG&E, SunPower announce major solar deal - San Jose Mercury News: "Biz break: PG&E, SunPower announce major solar deal
Plus: Netflix's movie rentals delayed, customers promised credit; former Apple attorney to pay $2.2 million in backdating case; Smith Barney to pay $33 million in gender-bias suit; eBay may invest in South Korean Gmarket
By Steve Johnson
Mercury News
Article Launched: 08/14/2008 02:30:44 PM PDT

Biz break: PG&E, SunPower announce major solar deal
Plus: Netflix's movie rentals delayed, customers promised credit; former Apple attorney to pay $2.2 million in backdating case; Smith Barney to pay $33 million in gender-bias suit; eBay may invest in South Korean Gmarket
By Steve Johnson
Mercury News
Article Launched: 08/14/2008 02:30:44 PM PDT

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For more than a year, San Jose's SunPower has been touting a 14-megawatt photo-voltaic solar array at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas as the largest in the nation. Today, that changes in a big way.

Pacific Gas & Electric announced two deals that will result in 800 megawatts of solar power from PV panels — enough to power nearly a quarter-million homes, according to the utility.

SunPower, best known for making solar panels used on homes and businesses, will now build a utility-scale-size plant. The 250 megawatt facility, to be constructed in San Luis Obispo County, will start generating power in 2010 and reach full capacity in 2012. It will require approval from regulators.

The second deal, announced at an afternoon press conference at PG&E's San Francisco headquarters, is even larger. The utility said it will buy 550 megawatts of power from a plant built by OptiSolar, a Hayward company. The plant, to be called the Topaz Solar Farms, uses thin-film solar panels that use sunlight to create electricity. Its technology allows it to deposit a thin layer, or film, of amorphous silicon on solar panels.

"It's monumental," said Julia Hamm, executive director of the Solar Electric Power Association in Washington, D.C. "I really think it demonstrates that the time for solar has come. It's not some small niche thing anymore for rooftops."

DVD delay:
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You stocked up on chips and Cheez Whiz in anticipation of watching Rambo XII or whatever and the darn DVD never arrived in the mail. It seems you and Netflix have got a problem.

A technical glitch has severely disrupted business at the Los Gatos company, which bills itself as the world's largest online movie rental service, potentially affecting millions of its customers.

The company was unable to ship any DVDs to its customers on Tuesday, managed only some deliveries Wednesday and so far today has not shipped any DVDs, said Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey.

Netflix promised inconvenienced customers a credit, but how much hasn't been determined. Neither has the cause of the glitch.

Stock backdating deal: Apple's former top attorney today agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle federal regulators' charges that she altered company records to conceal improper backdating of stock options for senior executives including Steve Jobs.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement with former Apple general counsel Nancy Heinen, whose civil trial in the case had been scheduled for next year. Heinen neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing in settling the SEC's lawsuit, which was filed last year in federal court in San Jose.

Heinen is paying nearly $1.6 million in restitution, plus $400,219 in interest and a civil fine of $200,000.

In another court settlement: Smith Barney has agreed to pay $33 million to resolve claims by three Northern California women that the brokerage giant favored men in pay, promotions and client assignments.

U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton of San Francisco approved the agreement Wednesday following lengthy negotiations between the Citigroup subsidiary and lawyers for the female brokers.

The nationwide settlement provides for payments to more than 2,400 current and past employees. The suit alleged that male branch managers assigned most new clients to male brokers, who earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions.

Going global: San Jose online auction company eBay is in talks to buy a minority stake in South Korean online marketplace operator Gmarket.

The talks are with Interpark and its chairman, Ki Hyung Lee, who own a combined 37 percent of Gmarket. Yahoo also owns a stake in Gmarket.

A purchase would mark eBay's latest move to capture the online auction market outside the United States. The company says more than half of its revenue already comes from abroad. EBay already runs Korean online auction site Internet Auction.

Silicon Valley tech stocks:

Up: Nanometrics, Netflix, Nvidia, Quantum and SanDisk

Down: Applied Materials, Bell Microproducts, Hewlett-Packard, NetApp and Silicon Graphics

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index: Up 25.05 points, or 1.03 percent, closing at 2,453.67.

The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average: Up 82.97 points, or .72 percent, closing at 11,615.93.

And the Standard & Poor's 500 index: Up 7.10 points, or .55 percent, closing at 1,292.93.

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services.