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Solar land lease · CA

Lease your land for solar in Imperial County, California

Imperial County has the highest solar resource in California — plus growing lithium brine extraction opportunities.

Free. Takes ~15 seconds. No account required.

In-depth Imperial County guide

Lease Imperial County, California land for solar (and lithium)

Imperial County has the highest solar resource in California — plus growing lithium brine extraction opportunities.

Imperial County in southeastern California has the strongest solar resource in California (6.8+ kWh/m²/day) and one of the most active utility-scale solar markets in the state. The county also sits over the Salton Sea geothermal brine field, which contains world-class lithium resources now being commercialized.

Imperial County solar economics in 2026

  • Active solar corridors: $1,200-$2,000 per acre per year (highest in California)
  • Outright sale prices: $30,000-$70,000 per acre

A 300-acre Imperial parcel at $1,600/ac/yr generates $480k+/yr.

Imperial Irrigation District (IID) — unique utility dynamics

IID is a municipal utility (not a CAISO IOU), with its own grid and procurement process. Solar developers selling into IID work directly with IID Power Department. Some Imperial solar projects sell into CAISO via IID's interconnect.

Lithium opportunity layered on solar

Salton Sea brine contains commercially significant lithium concentrations. Companies including Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE Renewables), Controlled Thermal Resources, EnergySource Minerals, and Hell's Kitchen are actively developing lithium extraction.

If your Imperial parcel sits over the brine field, you may have both surface lease opportunity (solar) and subsurface lease opportunity (lithium royalty). These can stack since solar uses the surface and lithium extraction is subsurface.

Active Imperial solar developers

  • 8minute Solar Energy
  • Recurrent Energy
  • First Solar
  • Lightsource bp
  • Sempra Infrastructure

Next step

Run a free Landholder.com assessment — we identify both solar resource AND lithium potential for Imperial County parcels.

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