Most Efficient Solar PV Plant of 2008 Won’t Hold Title for Long
A solar photovoltaic station tucked away high in a high Colorado mountain valley will finish 2008 as the nation’s most productive utility-scale solar PV facility, but the short-lived title won’t last long.
At 7,500 feet above sea level, Sun Edison’s 8.22-megawatt Alamosa facility was America’s most efficient solar plant in 2008. The 82-acre solar photovoltaic facility in the San Luis Valley of Colorado produced enough power for 1,652 homes, making it the largest plant of its kind in the country. And if you think 1,650 homes isn’t very many, you’ve never been to the sparsely-populated San Luis Valley.
The project, which just opened in December of 2007, will be surpassed in terms of total output by the recently-completed ten-megawatt El Dorado Energy Solar facility in southern Nevada.
Though Alamosa will slip to number two in terms of total output, it remains an excellent tool for tracking solar performance in an area that has some of the best solar resources in the country. Alamosa deploys three distinct types of solar technologies: Single axis tracking array, fixed-mount array, and dual axis tracking array with photovoltaic concentrator technology.
Having the three types of solar technologies deployed in parallel will afford engineers the opportunity to monitor the performance and relative benefits of each technology over the system’s expected 20-year lifespan.
Image: NREL
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January 30th, 2009 at 2:18 am
Ideally, we should see this sort of technological leapfrog continue for decades, similar to what we have seen in the building of skyscrapers – each designer/builder looking to exceed the record of the previous achievement. Just think of what 10 years of such innovation would do to the alternative energy market!
January 30th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Get out of the kitchen, fellas!
I suggest you ask the mortgage broker in the office next to you for a dictionary and look up the word, “efficient.”
TD
January 31st, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Actually at 7500′ ASL it might just be the most efficient – because the sun’s rays travel through less atmosphere. I don’t know what their weather patterns are like (days of sun per year), but the increased production from being at a higher elevation would work towards its advantage.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
there seems to be a new ‘largest pv farm’ sprouting up every week. It can only be good news for the industry
April 1st, 2009 at 2:03 pm
[...] drawback has spawned an entire industry aimed at saving that power for a rainy day. Photovoltaic (PV) power stations, from residential to industrial scale, harvest the sun’s rays and convert them [...]