Serpa power plant (pdf) Portugal 52,000 solar panels, 150 acres, 11 MW
Spread across a hillside pasture amid olive trees, 52,000 shimmering photovoltaic modules in one of the world’s largest solar power plants have begun generating enough electricity for 8,000 homes, GE, PowerLight Corp. and Catavento SA announced today.
After eight months of construction and testing, GE Energy Financial Services, a unit of General Electric, PowerLight, a subsidiary of SunPower Corporation and Catavento dedicated the 11-megawatt Serpa solar power plant today, on schedule no less. The facility — a model of clean power generation integrated with agriculture — is in one of Europe’s sunniest areas, in Portugal’s Alentejo agricultural region in the town of Serpa, 200 kilometers (124 miles) southeast of Lisbon.
GE Energy Financial Services financed and purchased the project in an approximately US $75 million transaction last year. PowerLight, designed, deployed, operates and maintains the plant. The plant uses PowerLight’s PowerTracker system that follows the sun’s daily path across the sky to generate more electricity than conventional fixed-mounted systems. Catavento, developed and manages the project, which began feeding Portugal’s electricity grid in late January.
Kevin Walsh, Managing Director and leader of renewable energy at GE Energy Financial Services, said today at a dedication ceremony in Serpa: “This project is successful because Portugal’s sunshine is plentiful, the solar power technology is proven, government policies are supportive, and we are investing and delivering under GE’s ecomagination initiative to help our customers meet their environmental challenges.†Added Andrew Marsden, Managing Director of GE Energy Financial Services’ European Operations: “The Serpa project is a springboard for other solar power investments we’re pursuing in Europe through project acquisitions, project finance, development capital and access to solar modules through GE Energy.â€
Generating electricity from the sun with no fuel costs or emissions, the Serpa plant is on a 60-hectare (150-acre) hillside, equivalent to the area of more than 80 football fields. The project supports a European Union initiative by saving more than 30,000 tons a year in greenhouse gas emissions compared to equivalent fossil fuel generation. The EU this month agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020, from 1990 levels.
Portugal relies heavily on imported fossil fuels, and its carbon dioxide emissions have increased 34 percent since 1990, among the fastest rates in the world. To address this, the country is implementing some of the world’s most advanced incentives for installing renewable energy. The Serpa project relies on a preferential tariff mandated by the Portuguese government. Solar power enjoys widespread support in Portugal, with the backing of 77 percent of the population, according to a European Commission study published in January.
At today’s ceremony, a 3.7 million euro (US $4.8 million) contract was signed for a grant to the project under the Portuguese government’s Economic Modernization Program.
Piero Dal Maso, co-CEO of Catavento, said the project “serves as a beacon to the world to show how to overcome challenges of scale and complexity.†Added co-CEO Rui Pimenta: “We hope the government will clear remaining roadblocks so solar power can truly radiate across Portugal.â€
Construction of the Serpa project began in June 2006 and was completed as planned in January 2007. The facility consists of a ground-mounted photovoltaic system that uses silicon solar cell technology to convert sunlight directly into energy. The Serpa solar power plant incorporates photovoltaic modules from SunPower, Sanyo, Sharp and Suntech.
That is an insane amount of solar power! 11MW isn’t a lot (about 4 large wind turbines) and the land can be used for something else with wind, but it’s a goggling sight, and a lesson in the scale that this stuff can get up to – it’s just the start. With arrays of many square miles in desert areas, connected to power grids using high voltage DC, we could really see something huge.
Now if only we could get the buggers to switch their air con off ;-)
This is a good news, but i wonder myself :
11 MW over 150 acre seems few compared with 64 MW over 400 acre for Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) at Nevada’s Solar One Power Plant
(http://www.blog.thesietch.org/2007/03/24/nevadas-solar-one-power-plant/)
That gives :
-13.63 acres for 1 MW with photovoltaics
-6.25 acres for 1 MW with CSP
Plus the fact that heat can easily be stored for the night or no-sun time.
What do you think of the comparison ?
Are the conditions required the same ?
What does it cost for installation and maintenance ?
Why is everyone focused on one solution instead of the two ?
Many questions ….
Keep on the good work
Hello Littleuldav:
Renewable energy systems do not often have very high power density/space requirements. As technology has become more efficient these space requirements will go down. (take a look at the five megawatt wind turbines coming out of Germany right now, this whole field of pv could have been just three wind turbines)
CSP has a higher density, but it requires a different kind environment, think desert, think hot, think lots and lots of sun. PV on the other hand can work in just about any climate. Check out this map
http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/sunbelt_map.jpg
for a good idea of where CSP would be good.
I tend to agree that CSP is a very slick solution to power generation, but I think that soon PV cells will get very efficient and therefore become a very effective way to produce power. Part of that growth is going to be demonstrating that you can make a lot of power (11Mw) with pv. This will drive the market to grow.
Frankly I don’t know which is cheaper to run, or install, I would imagine that CSP would come out ahead. I would also like to think that these people did some sort of cost analysis before they dropped what must be a considerable amount of cash on this project, to figure out what would be the best way to go.
Like you said many solutions is the way to go. Silver buckshot, not silver bullet. Thanks for the comment.
INTEGRATED . . .
INTEGRATED . . .
INTEGRATED . . .
The article say’s, “The facility — a model of clean power generation INTEGRATED with agriculture”
It means that the land is CO-GENERATING electricity as well as agricultural production.
Hello The Naib,
First thanks for your explanation,
My question was due to the fact that countrys like my own, France, have very limited “desert” space area, in fact not at all as far as i know.
So solar energy land-use will always have to compete with agricultural land use.
So the higher ratio in land usage, the easier to install and be worthy.
Project are on their way, as you reported it, to install CSP in North Africa, that is not so far away, and if everybody play the game, it should work fine.
Some other important factors for installations are predictability. Banks, and investors will want to be sure that the installation they are paying for will be working in 10, 20 and 30 years. So they look for technologies and products that have already been that long out there in the world. If they can choose. They call it risk.
CSP industry knows that. They talked about it a lot in a conference that they had recently here in Madrid, in El Escorial. Flat PV is simple, proven and reliable. Sometimes it is a pity “the industry”, or “the money” goes so slowly but it is like that, and you will have trouble changing that.