World's biggest solar electric plant opens in Germany

peakoil.com -> news.monstersandcritics.com :

A solar electric power plant, billed by its operators as the world's biggest, went into service in the southern German state of Bavaria. More than 1,400 movable solar modules will collect the sun's rays and harness them into energy for around 3,500 households, according to operators Solon AG. The company has invested 70 million euros (90 million dollars) in the project, which took 15 months to complete and will have an output of 12 megawatts when fully operational.

The plant is located in the same state as a solar park in Pocking which held the previous record as the world's biggest, providing 10 megawatts of electricity to 3,300 homes. Solar energy accounts for less than 1% of the country's energy needs, but the figure is expected to grow to more than 5% by 2020, according to the German Solar Energy Association BSW.

- The bunch of "largest solar power plants" announced so far are maxing out below 20MW - 12MW in Germany, 11MW in Portugal, and another upcoming 18MW in Nevada, USA. Quite some distance from a typical 500MW gas- or oil-driven power plant. Maybe a distributed "Electric Internet" approach might be better? But that would require a move to a "smart power grid" which can cope with varying power surges as intermittent sources come online and go offline.

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