The World’s Largest Thin-Film Solar Photovoltaic Power Plant: 10 Megawatts
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY 
on 07.25.08
The world’s previous thin-film solar record holder was this plant in Germany, with 6 megawatts of capacity.
In what has got to be one of the most ludicrous bits of public-relations-speak I’ve heard in a while, First Solar and Sempra have announced that they will be jointly constructing the world’s largest thin-film solar photovoltaic power plant. The capacity of this monster: 10 megawatts.
The details from CNET: Located next to Sempra’s El Dorado gas power plant, about 40 miles from Las Vegas, the new solar PV plant will begin construction this month and is expected to finish later in the year. Sempra will own and operate the plant, with First Solar monitoring and maintaining the facility.
Can we hold off on the “world’s largest” claims in renewable energy for a while?
I don’t mean to be down on this project. We need every bit of renewable energy development in the world—provided it doesn’t do more harm than good, like the rush to embrace biofuels which has millions of people into poverty—and this project will take us one more step along the long path to a post-carbon future.
However, the drum beat of world’s largest, world’s biggest, world’s best in the renewable energy industry sometimes can be too much. It’s all needed, but we still have a long way to go. Especially if the goal is all-renewable electric generation in 10 years, as Al Gore envisions.
Where are we now, in the United States, in terms of renewable energy capacity?
At the end of 2007, the electric generating capacity of the United States was 1,089,807 megawatts. Of that 2.5% came from renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal, with an additional 5.8% coming from hydro.
So announcing that you have created the world’s largest something when that something is fractions of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of overall demand seems absurd. We might as well start creating world’s largest categories for power plants whose construction was done only on Tuesdays by men wearing red hats.
A 10 megawatt thin-film solar plant may be important for thin-film solar plants, but is a drop in the ocean of overall energy demand.
Genuinely large projects on the drawing board
Not to mention that there have been some genuinely large renewable energy facilities announced recently: The 1,000 MW London Array and T. Boone Pickens’ 4,000 megawatt wind farm spring to mind. And I also don’t mean to discount the potential of microgenerated power to compete with fossil fuels. But when everything is billed as the largest, biggest and best, it is easy to miss the importance of each project in the wider scheme of things. It also leads to a bit of world record fatigue.
So when Sempra president Michael Allman says, “We look forward to helping the region’s utilities meet the state requirements calling for them to include solar, wind and other renewable energy sources in the power portfolios,” I can’t help but think ‘you’re really not helping that much’, at least not yet.
CORRECTION
Sempra Energy has contacted me and pointed out that I was incorrect in saying that they claimed this was the world's largest thin-film solar PV plant. Sempra says that this will be the largest such plant in North America.
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I've got to respetuflly disagree with you there Matthew - I see these announcements as hugey positive. There is a very real "arms race" going on among companies wanting solar arrays right now.
I know from talking to a solar energy client we work with that their customers regularly up the size of their installment to "beat" previous projects - it's important to them from PR (and probably simple competitive spirit) terms to have the biggest array in their city, state, region, industry sector or whatever - and that competitiveness leads to more solar capacity - which is something the world needs to build up VERY rapidly.
I think most people involved in eco issues regard these huge initiatives as a way big energy businesses are trying to hold on to an increasingly outmoded concept - centralised production of energy.
That approach obviously worked well for traditional forms of energy production but solar and wind energy can take full advantage of creation and delivery of power over short distances without the wastage that is attendant with transfer of power over distances.
So... old power, old powerful business trying to cling to outmoded principles - it's time for a fresh approach.
Little impact is better than none.
At least this sort of "biggest ever" rhetoric is sparking some much needed competiveness in the renewable business in order to make the technology more available and cheap.
The "worlds biggest" and similar flourishes are a love for media outlets. It's the need to be better than everyone else, even briefly. It irks me every time I see similar lines especially in regards to the war. Comments like "the highest death toll since...", "more violence since...". It's like the media is clawing for sensationalism. When every article has some sort of "most killing ever" line, it sort of belittles the magnitude of the situation.
I think there's one big reason to advocate this kind of behavior and that's competition. Big American egos is a large part of what got us into this atmosphere-polluting mindset we have going on and if anything is going to help get us out I would put my money on it being the same thing.
Big egos lead to big(ger) SUVs, jumbo jets, factories, whatever.
If a little competition is going to give the renewable energy industry a little push then so be it.
@ weee recycling:
You are absolutely right. Centralized power generation is outmoded and inefficient, particulaly when solar and wind can installed locally.
I live in New York, and just about everyday I think about all these empty, hot, flat rooftops, just waiting to get vegetative roofs, solar hot water panels, and PV panels. The taller ones could probably be outfitted with microturbines as well. Not to mention the potential of tidal and wave energy in the estuaries surrounding the region. Why generate energy in the middle of a desert where nobody lives when we can generate it in our urban centers, with high population densities and locations just waiting for power generation installations?
The biggest problem, at least in my mind, with energy generation is that we take a centralized approach. We need to decentralize to really tap into energy generation potentials, and avoid catastrophic events such as regional blackouts.
Decentralization takes the power out of a handful of companies, (really, how is a solar farm different from an oil field from a business perspective?) and makes individuals and communities more cognizant of their energy consumption.
Oh, what the heck. If it gets them moving in the right direction and doesn't hurt anyone in the process, let 'em have their "world's shiniest". Now all we need is for someone to develop exclusive designer cool-looking windmills that rich people out on the Cape will really want to have in their yards, and then let them start fighting for who can have the most exclusive designer hi-tech windmill.
I personally think it's awesome :)
That's about 6 acres it looks like, not bad for a 10 megawatt display.
The photo you see is for a plant in Germany, with 6 megawatts of capacity. The new plant will be built outside Las Vegas.
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author responds:
Yes, entirely. Couldn't find a photo of the new plant in Las Vegas, so the previous record-holder would have to do.
Aw, c'mon, what's the harm in a little friendly competition?
I think if anything, I think we should stop calling solar and wind "alternative energies" where we're just comparing them to each other, and we should be simply calling them "energy" and compare them to existing coal and nuclear power plants.
So, keep the competition coming, and let's even gander at changing the nomenclature and the playing field!
For all I've been following the solar industry, I hadn't realized that the largest plant in existence right now was a paltry 6 MW. Even 10 MW is fairly trivial.
Given that Nanosolar and others will soon be cranking out 1 GW in annual capacity, I expect the solar industry's (extremely) healthy growth will remain a common thread in future posts...
Debbie Downer. Just think of the millions of tons of carbon saved each time there is a biggest and best solar array. A bit of friendly competition is only a good thing in this area.
I agree with the author. Claims like these, while true, create a false sense of complacency in a public that would be better served by being more concerned. Calling a 10 MW plant "the biggest ever" when we need to replace 1,000,000 MW of generation is kind of ridiculous.
@ Tim H & Weee
Individual systems, like rooftop PV and small wind turbines, will serve strictly niche and supplemental roles. Take wind. There are already dozens of gigawatts of installed capacity, the vast majority of which are the huge corporate owned wind towers, despite a plethora of smaller individual designs. It's nice having your own power generation, but it's not reality. PV and personal wind turbines don't produce power reliably. You're still reliant on the grid. And distributed systems are hard to maintain, especially with oil production about to decline. Also, they require a very large initial personal outlay, which most people can't afford. And many people can't cope with the noise or sight of them on their own or their neighbor's property either.
The kinds of systems that can produce baseload power all require economies of scale and have vast start up costs: concentrated solar, solar thermal, geothermal, tidal, wave, nuclear, and fusion. Even wind has better economies of scale. One 5MW wind turbine is 100% more efficent than 500 smaller 10K watt windturbines. Part of this is maintenance, but part is also the fact that power is proportional to the cross sectional area of the turbine. A 200 foot rotor gives four times the power of a 100 foot rotor, and 16x the power of a 50 foot rotor. Also, larger wind turbines are higher where the wind blows more strongly and consistently.
Don't worry, power will still be "distributed," just not possessed by individuals. America currently has over 1000 gigawatts of installed electrical production. Since alternative energy plants tend to be in the 50-200 MW range (not to mention large individual wind turbines which range from 1 to 5 MW each), it will require ten thousand of these all across the US to replace our current fossil fuel based system.
I'm always amazed companies want to buy land to build this sort of thing.
You would think they would want to charge homeowners to install it and lease it to them. Sounds like a quicker payback that way (for the company)
I want my solar to be mine and sell back the power to the companies. One day!
Looks like an eyesore next to that beautiful forest. I wonder how many trees they cut down to install this thing?
Centralized power generation is so primitive! What a waste.
I think... solar energy will be the most popular energy in 2020.
They're planing 26 new coal plants, mostly for their phase out of nuclear but also because they need it to back up their wind and solar silliness.
Given the capacity factor of coal and solar; you'd need about 8 000-10 000 10 MW capacity arrays to replace that coal power and that's before you consider the efficiency of the storage.
Really? This is "one of the most ludicrous bits of public-relations-speak" you've heard in a while? I've heard much worse recently from the Administration on a variety of topics including Iraq, the economy, global warming, ANWR and offshore drilling; and from the coal industry on clean coal, etc. At least this is factual, albeit small in the overall scheme of energy supply.
To the extent that we hope the average American is engaging and reading/hearing about projects like this, I believe it's important to use the superlatives. I don't think the average American has any feel for a megawatt, overall demand or their monthly usage.
Everytime I see this announcement I have to laugh a bit. The Ontario Power Authority has already contracted for 470MW of capacity to be built over the next several years under 20-year PPAs. One of the companies participating in this program has won contracts amounting to 210MW.
While the SunPower announcement is certainly good news I am surprised at the fact that nobody seems to know what is going on just north of our border. We should probably take a page from Ontario, they have announced over 1,300MW of new renewable capacity contracts since the beginning of 2007...
See the info here: http://www.powerauthority.on.ca/SOP/Page.asp?PageID=122&ContentID=6570
Did you ever stop to consider that a drive for a greener electricity grid must be based upon economic viability and business prospect.
Nobody is going to build wind / sun or hydro power stations / grids if there is no money in it.
And one of the cornerstones in selling/ earning money is Marketing.
You lack of insight here is somewhat narrow minded.