UP TO 10 large-scale solar power plants would be built in regional Victoria under a state government scheme to run a quarter of the state on renewable energy by 2020.

Promising to make Victoria the ''solar capital'' of Australia, Premier John Brumby set a target of 5 per cent of the state's electricity coming from large solar plants within 10 years.

John Brumby in Bridgewater to announce that Victoria's solar electricity supply will increase. Credit:Paul Rovere

The plan won the immediate approval of the Australian Greens, with spokeswoman Christine Milne declaring that Mr Brumby was ''leaving Julia Gillard in his wake''.

The target would be met through the nation's first large solar feed-in-tariff - a subsidy that will pay solar companies a premium rate to make their technology competitive with coal, gas and wind power. The target is additional to the national 20 per cent renewable energy target, which is expected to mainly build wind farms.