Bakersfield has scored $3 million in federal stimulus money to use for a 1-megawatt solar plant that will power the city’s expanding wastewater plant in the southwest.

The money will cover about half the estimated cost of the solar plant, according to Public Works Director Raul Rojas. About half of the rest of the money will come from rebates from PG&E once the project is built. The city will have to front the money until then.

“It won’t give us all the power that we need,” Rojas said. “It’s somewhere around 40 percent of the electricity we’ll use.” But the plant will also produce the most power on those sunny summer days when PG&E charges more for electricity.

The feds require that the project go out to bid within 18 months. Rojas said he’d prefer to do it this winter. The city will hire a consultant to do some schematics, then put the project out to bid for one company to design and build.

The project could go to a local company, if they can bid low enough. There are several solar installers in town.

“Preferably we’d rather it stay local,” said Dave Macias, vice president of operations at Pure Energy in Bakersfield. He said a 1-megawatt project is about twice the size of a typical retail-scale project — the kind that would go on the roof of a Wal-Mart, for example — and easily within his firm’s capability.

A 1-megawatt system is about 120,000 square feet of solar panels. It’ll take about five acres, and won’t be visible from the roadway, Rojas said.