Monday October 26, 2009

Largest solar power plant in US to go online in Florida

softsailor.com :

The largest solar power plant in the United States may soon go live in Florida. The Desoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center will be able to convert sunlight into 25 MW of renewable solar electric power, twice the second-largest solar power system in the US. It is scheduled to go live on Tuesday [27 Oct 2009] and President Barack Obama will visit the facility on the launch day. The plant is located 80 miles southeast from Tampa and it covers 180 acres of land. It cost $150 million and took over 400 employees to build, though only a few employees will run it.

- Great effort at renewable energy in the US. 180 acres works out to 7.84 million square feet. That kind of land might be a little hard to find back here in tiny Singapore. Now, peakoilers are well-versed with the basic advantages and disadvantages of solar power, including the cost of the solar panels themselves, load capacity and the baseload power issue, and sometimes EROEI is brought up as well.

What is less commonly discussed is land - or the lack thereof. There are quite a number of places especially in Asia where it is a big factor. Besides Singapore, you might also think about places like Hong Kong or Tokyo where there simply isn't any space to build due to geographical constraints - be it factors like being surrounded by the ocean, or being located in between the ocean and mountains inland.

Green energy is laudable but it is clear that built-up city areas without a huge hinterland will find it rather difficult to implement solar power installations on an industrial scale. Plus, 80% of the population here lives in tall apartment buildings for which, even if technological breakthroughs like nano-solar paint (which have been talked about since 2005 - and earlier) were to appear, makes for yet another set of challenges. We need to recognize that not everyone lives in a country with a huge landmass, and not everyone lives in houses with roofs and gardens and are able to put up a bank of solar cells any time they wish.

One more thing about the land factor over here in Singapore : the prices are steep and with the recovering Singapore property market, it's certainly not getting any cheaper nowadys. Something that takes up over 7 million square feet might run into the billions of dollars in terms of land costs and development charges payable to the government. Throw in another two orders of magnitude to the 25MW, the 180 acres, and the cost, and you can see the kind of challenges that built-up Asian cities are facing. It's great for places where large solar power plants are feasible, land is cheap and plentiful and nearby the area where the power will be utilized, but for the rest of us in other parts of the world, we'll probably have to think of something else.

See also :

1. World's largest solar photovoltaic project to be built in Nevada
2. Solar thermal starts to shine in world's deserts
3. Portugal to build 11MW solar power plant
4. World's biggest solar electric plant opens in Germany
5. Construction starts on world's largest solar array

(2009-10-26 20:35:51 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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