Good Day Sunshine

One of the largest solar energy plants in the world went on line in Portugal this winter.

By Katherine Bourzac

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Credit: Antonio Luis Campos

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•	View a slideshow of a solar energy plant in Portugal.

The following article appears in the March/April 2007 issue of Technology Review.

One of the largest solar power plants in the world went on line this winter in the sunny pastures of Serpa, a town in southern Portugal. The plant is owned by General Electric and operated by PowerLight of Berkeley, CA. At its peak, around noon on a sunny day, the solar park can generate 11 megawatts of electricity--enough to power 8,000 homes.

View the photo essay.

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Comments

	$ & ¢ nekote on 04/05/2007 at 2:57 AM
Posts: 98 Avg Rating:	Info with pictures: $75M project 21,340,000 KWH / YR 5% 30YR $75M mortgage = $4.8M / YR 22.6¢ / KWH break even Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: $ & ¢ osawaf on 04/05/2007 at 9:52 AM
Posts: 2 Avg Rating:	How do you calculate KWH? Are you assuming peak output at noon? O&M? Will they last 30 years? Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: $ & ¢ ms on 04/05/2007 at 12:21 PM
Posts: 54	The kwH/yr figure is given in the photo essay. FYI, it works out to 21340MWh/8766h = 2.43MW average power (as opposed to the 11MW peak power). Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Biggest project? RickJ on 04/05/2007 at 4:29 AM
Posts: 4	This is one of the biggest solar PV projects in the world - but the biggest solar (thermal trough) project at Kramer Junction, CA is over 30 times bigger, at 343 MW - and is significantly more cost effective. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Re: Biggest project? rhapsodyinglue on 04/05/2007 at 4:29 PM
Posts: 54 Avg Rating:	Perhaps there are too many cloudy days to make concentrating solar effective in that area. It would seem more sensible to save the costly PV cells for distributed generation use on rooftops and go with solar thermal for large grid projects. Of course from a global optimization standpoint it probably doesn't make much sense to put so large of a percentage of the worlds' PV output on German rooftops, which get significantly less intense sunshine than many other places in the world. But the interaction of politics and markets often don't opt for the optimal solutions. Living in CA, I do hope that we see some more of the big concentrating solar projects in the near future. Rate this comment: (Reply)

	Lighting for solar energy system ablamp on 04/30/2007 at 11:48 PM
Posts: 5 Avg Rating:	China Manufacturer of high quality Energy Saving Compact Fluorescent light bulbs ( CFLs ),LED Replacement Lamps,Halogen Lamps,Fluorescent tubes. http://www.ablamp.com info@ablamp.com Rate this comment: (Reply)