Friday July 20, 2007

California to build world's largest solar farm

cnn.com :

A San Francisco company said Friday [6 Jul 2007] it plans to build the world's largest solar power farm near Fresno, California. The 80-megawatt farm is to occupy as much as 640 acres and upon completion in 2011 will be 17 times the size of the largest U.S. solar farm, said Cleantech America LLC, a privately held 2-year-old company. The farm will also be about seven times the size of the world's biggest plant and double the largest planned farm, both in Germany.

Bill Barnes, CEO of Cleantech, said the scale of the Kings River Conservation District Community Choice Solar Farm will change renewable energy and make California the global leader for huge solar projects and replace Germany as the solar energy hub of the world. "We're pretty confident that solar farms on this scale are going to have an industry-changing impact," Barnes said. "We think it's the wave of the future. This scale of project, I think, creates a tipping point for renewable energy." Barnes declined to give the estimated construction cost of the Community Choice farm.

- 80MW *is* a lot bigger than the other 12MW and 18MW projects planned so far, but this one seems to be in very early planning stages. Still quite some distance from traditional 500MW or larger power plants, though, and not to forget effective capacity utilization of lower than 50%, considering night-time, clouds, and rain. One of the key pieces of the puzzle remains elusive : massive, grid-scale battery backup.

See also :

1. Construction starts on world's largest solar array (18MW, Nevada, USA)
2. World's largest solar photovoltaic project to be built in Nevada
3. World's biggest solar electric plant opens in Germany (12 MW)
4. Portugal to build 11MW solar power plant

(2007-07-20 12:14:35 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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