About US$107 million is to be dropped by Mighty River Power into a 49.9 megawatt geothermal power station in southern California. It is a project led by GeoGlobal Energy, a US-based geothermal developer.

The state-owned electricity generator and retailer have installed successfully the same technology at its Kawerau and brand-new Nga Awa Purua plant.

MRP is increasing its commitment to the GGE capital fund, in which it is the sole capital investor, from US$100m to US$250m. The company will be able to continue pursuing similar geothermal opportunities in Chile with US-based GGE.

The announcement by MRP is the second major offshore investment in a fortnight by electricity SOE. Meridian Energy was paying $191 million for the 70MW Mt Millar windfarm in South Australia.

This investment was one of the largest renewable developments occurring in the US in 2010, according to MRP Chief Executive, Doug Heffernan and the only key to win involvement in the Hudson Ranch project, is the MRP's experience with high temperature geothermal resources and infrastructure.

Heffernan said, "MRP is one of the world's 10 largest geothermal operators and has relatively rare and highly sought after competencies in a nice sector of the global power industry".