VICTORVILLE - What would you buy with $700 million?

Probably not a power plant.

But that's exactly what Victorville wants - not just any power plant, but the nation's first hybrid that combines natural gas and solar power generation technologies.

Leaders from the city and General Electric Co. signed a contract on Tuesday that marks the first step to build the $700million power plant on 300-plus acres located just north of the sprawling Southern California Logistics Airport.

Construction will start this June on Victorville 2, also known as "VV2".

Its neighbor to the south is the High Desert Power Project, an 830-megawatt, natural-gas-fired power plant, already up and running.

The hybrid plant is scheduled to become operational by mid-2010.

"We're combining two technologies," said Tom Barnett, the city's energy consultant and executive vice president with Inland Energy Inc., in explaining the hybrid plant. "There's essentially a jet engine that burns natural gas. The heat from the (jet engine's) hot exhaust is turned into steam, and the steam is pushed into a steam turbine."