Avanzalia Solar now has a solar plant producing 13.8 MegaWatts of energy, making it the largest solar plant in the world.
However, at 36 hectares, it does take up a lot of space, pointing out one of the issues with using solar production on a truly large scale.
36 hectares is about 89 acres, about half the land my Dad owns and he’s not even a farmer. My point being that 36 hectares might be a lot of space in England, but not in Indiana, and not so much in Spain, either.
A reasonable consumer rate for electrical power seems to be about 5 cents US (or 6 pence GBP, ha) per kWh, so 13.8 MW will earn about $700 per hour — during the day. That’s, eh, call it 10 useful hours, or $7000 per day = $2,450,000 per year if you assume 350 useful days of sunlight per year (I have no idea how much cloudy weather affects solar energy output; Indiana has about 100 “mean clear days per year”, which doesn’t jibe well with my intuition — so maybe we’re only talking a million a year?)
That’s not chicken feed for only half my Dad’s land — but I’d miss the woods. And that much investment in mirrors (I suppose mirrors and steam, not photovoltaic) would set him back a bit to start with. But still. Intriguing.
Nice to meet a fellow Hoosier, Michael. I think the big point here is that 36 hectares will power 5,000 homes, 10,000 when they’re fully up and running (according to the article). While 36 hectares isn’t that much room, for powering 10,000 homes, that’s a lot of space.
I’m from Indianapolis, with a metro area nearing 2 million people – wow, that’s grown! Wikipedia says there are 320,000 households, so assuming they use the same amount of power per household as Spain (which I’m sure they don’t), that’s roughly 32 of these farms, or nearly 3,000 acres to power the city of Indianapolis. And having lived in Spain as well, I can tell you Indy doesn’t get nearly the sun Spain does.
I recall reading about another solar project in Spain, somewhere around Sevilla, where the mirrors focused onto a central pillar with an intensity that could set a person on fire. Maybe I read it on here somewhere, I’ll have to try and dig it up.
The problem might be local thinking.
The US southwest has a lot of desert, lots of sun, not much else, and Indian reserves.
Maybe one of the tribes will use the casino winnings to fund a solar power station and then sell the power to the US.
Now that would be irony!!!