Pacific Gas and Electric is one of the biggest utilities in the U.S. and has a good history as a progressive purchaser of solar energy from third parties.

Today, however, at the Clean-tech Investor Summit, PG&E CEO Peter Darbee stated that they now intend to build their own solar energy installations.

Without getting into the specifics of the size of the solar energy farms he did allow that they would be similar to Southern California Edison’s program, which is budgeted at $875 million over the course of five years, and will involve the placement of 65 million square feet of solar panels on commercial rooftops.

These are the sort of initiatives that will be necessary to meet California’s mandate that by 2020 utilities generate 33% of their electricity from renewable sources. A mandate that is being catalyzed by the 30% tax credit companies receive for renewable energy projects.