Jeanne Roberts

April 5, 2010, Cooler Planet — Kaiser Permanente, the biggest nonprofit health maintenance organization (HMO) in the country, said this week that it plans to install solar power systems at 15 of its California locations this year.

Kaiser, which operates primarily in California but also has locations in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Ohio, and the Atlantic tri-state area (Virginia, D.C. and Maryland), provides medical care and peripheral services like mental health, hospice care, pharmaceuticals, dental care and wellness care to 8 million members.

The solar systems will be installed by San Francisco-based independent power producer Recurrent Energy, and the ultimate production capacity of 15 megawatts – or 10 percent of the electricity Kaiser uses across its service territory – will be fully operational by the summer of 2011, according to officials from both Kaiser and Recurrent.