Power & Industrial

Global Records

The 10 Largest Solar Photovoltaic Power Plants in the World

Solar power generation is on a roll, partly propelled from plummeting costs

By Scott Lewis

0627solar1 — **Slide show**

Longyangxia Dam Solar Park, an 850-MW project in China, was completed in 2015. Also named the Gonghe PV Station, this immense solar power plant was built in two stages. Click on page two of the main text to see how this project combines hydropower and photovoltaic systems.

*Photo Courtesy Planet Labs*

0627solar2 — 2. Solar Star I & II, 579 MW, U.S., completed 2015. BHE Solar, a subsidiary of BHE Renewables, developed this plant as two co-located installations on a 3,200-acre site near Rosamond, California, in the western Mojave Desert. The design-builder was SunPower, which supplied 3.8 million of its SunPower Oasis panels. Both Solar Star I and II feature panels mounted on single-axis trackers, where the panels are mounted on bars which rotate east and west to follow the sun’s movement, thereby increasing the yield. Construction began in 2013, and it became fully operational in June 2015. It supplies power to Southern California Edison. SunPower also provides ongoing operations and maintenance services for the plants. Solar Star was purchased in January 2013 by MidAmerican Solar for $2 billion. MidAmerican Solar is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.

*Photo Courtesy BHE Renewables*

0627solar3a — 3. (tie) Topaz Solar Farm, 550 MW, U.S., 2015. BHE Renewables, the owner, developed this 4,700-acre plant in San Luis Obispo County, California. First Solar, Inc., supplied and installed 9 million photovoltaic modules. Topaz’s panels are mounted on fixed-tilt arrays. Construction began in 2011 and was completed in March 2015. It supplies power to Pacific Gas & Electric under a 25-year power-purchase agreement. Topaz was purchased in December 2011 by Mid American Energy Holdings from First Solar. The plant is located adjacent to the existing 230-kV Morro Bay-to-Midway transmission line.

0627solar3b — 3. (tie) Desert Sunlight Solar Farm, 550 MW, U.S., 2015. It is co-owned by NextEra Energy Resources, GE Energy Financial Services, and Sumitomo Corp. of America. It is located on land managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management, six miles north of Desert Center. Construction started in 2011.

*Photo Courtesy NextEra Energy Resources*

0627solar5 — 5. Huanghe Hydropower Golmud Solar Park, 500 MW, China, 2014. Huanghe Hydropower, the owner, built the park in two phases. It is located in Qinghai Province at an elevation of over 9,000 ft. Construction of the 200-MW first phase began in 2009 and was completed in 2011. The contractor was Yingli, which used photovoltaic modules supplied by Yingli Green Energy.

*Photo Courtesy of Yingli Solar*

0627solar6 — 6. Copper Mountain Solar Facility, 458 MW, U.S., 2015. Boulder City, Nevada. The facility is jointly owned by Sempra U.S. Gas & Power and Con Edison Development. It is being built in four phases. It features fixed-tilt arrays of thin-film photovoltaic panels. Phase 1 was 58 MW and was completed by December 2010. Phase 2, completed in 2015, added 150 MW. The EPC contractor for Phases 1 and 2 was First Solar. Phase 3 added 250 MW and was completed in 2015. The EPC contractor for Phase 3 was AMEC. Phase 4 is currently under construction by AMEC, and when it is completed by late 2016, it will add 94 MW, bringing the plant’s total capacity to 552 MW.

*Photo Courtesy of Sempra U.S. Gas & Power*

0627solar7 — 7. Tamil Nadu Solar Facility, 360 MW, India, 2016. The Adani Group is developing this plant in Kamuthi in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India. 360 MW of capacity was recently grid-connected. When completed, the project will reach a capacity of 648 MW.

*Photo Courtesy of Charanka Solar Park*

0627solar8 — 8. Cestas Solar Farm, 300 MW, France, 2015. Developed by Neoen, Cestas is Europe’s largest solar photovoltaic power plant. The construction cost was $382 million, and the plant covers 625 acres. It is located near Bordeaux, in southwest France. Eiffage and Schneider Electric are partners of the consortium, along with Neoen, a renewable-energy company based in Paris. The plant incorporates panels made by Yingli Solar, Trina Solar and Canadian Solar.

*Photo Courtesy of Neoen*

0627solar9 — 9. Agua Caliente Solar Project, 290 MW, U.S., 2014. Owned by NRG Energy and MidAmerican Solar, Agua Caliente was designed and built by First Solar, Inc. It is located on a 24,000-acre site 65 miles east of Yuma, Arizona. It features 5.2 million panels of thin film cells manufactured by First Solar. The panels are mounted on fixed-tilt arrays. The construction cost was $1.8 billion.

*Photo Courtesy of NRG Energy*

0627solar10 — 10. Antelope Valley Solar Ranch 1, 266 MW, U.S., 2015. Originally developed by First Solar, Antelope Valley Solar Ranch was bought by Exelon Corp. in 2011, as construction began. The U.S. Dept. of Energy issued a $646-million loan guarantee in 2011 to support the project’s construction. The loan guarantee was part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The total construction cost was $1.36 billion. The plant contains 3.8 million solar panels. The power generated by the plant is being purchased by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. under a 25-year power-purchase agreement. In 2013, after reports of a spike in cases of Valley fever (coccidioidomycosis) and complaints of fugitive dust from the construction site, some construction was stopped. Valley fever is caused by a fungus living in desert soil than can cause pneumonia when breathed in wind-borne dust. The dust mitigation plan was reviewed by First Solar, Los Angeles County, and the Antelope Valley Air Quality Management District, and the parties agreed to a number of changes in construction practice.

*Photo Courtesy of Baker Electric*

Solar power generation is on a roll, propelled by the plummeting costs of photovoltaic (PV) panels and a wide array of incentive programs.

The global solar market had a record year in 2015, adding 55 GW worth of installed capacity, according to a recent report by GTM Research. At the end of 2015, total installed global solar power capacity reached 227 GW, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The GTM report also forecast that another 66 GW will be added in 2016. "We continue to expect stable, steady growth of the solar industry,” says John Smirnow, secretary-general of the Global Solar Council, a lobbying organization for the solar power industry whose membership comprises national and regional associations from around the world. The council has set a goal of 10 million direct solar industry jobs by 2030.

“Solar is a young industry,” says Smirnow. “Some countries have just started embracing solar. Governments are pouring billions of dollars into investments in solar.”

China installed 18 GW of solar PV power plants last year, bringing its total to 48 GW and passing Germany for most installed PV power capacity. Germany, now at No. 2, has approximately 38 GW, followed by Japan (37 GW) and the U.S. (26 GW). New solar power installations in 2015 received $161 billion in investment, according to the Renewables 2016 Global Status Report, issued by REN21, or the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century. Twenty-two countries had at least enough solar power capacity at the end of 2015 to meet more than 1% of their electricity demand, according to the report. The three leading nations, in terms of installed solar capacity as a proportion of total electricity demand, were Italy (7.8%), Greece (6.5%) and Germany (5.9%).

“Feed-in tariffs have been one of the critical incentive measures for the growth of solar power,” says Smirnow. Feed-in tariffs mandate that solar and other renewable-energy generators, including homeowners, business owners and private investors, be paid a cost-based price for the electricity they supply to the grid. Feed-in tariff policies have been enacted in more than 50 countries.

Manfred Engelhard, technology manager for energy at M+W Central Europe GmbH, says he “sees three good reasons for the success of PV solar now: One, falling prices for installation and operation of the systems; two, easiness of system ownership and operation, no moving parts, easy to maintain, quite predictable in power output; and three, scalability.”

M+W has completed over 700 MW of solar projects since 2002, including over 500 MW in the U.S. since 2013. One of the largest, a 55-MW solar project in the Negev Desert in Israel, presented certain challenges relating to the single-axis trackers. “Adjusting the trackers to the optimum based on the given parameters—such as module distance, height difference and installation angle—was quite a bit of work in the commissioning phase,” said Engelhard.

Engelhard sees Asia and the Middle East as promising regions for solar power work. “Countries in Asia will develop [solar] since they often suffer a high power price, which PV can easily undercut. We are currently negotiating for several PV projects there—mostly large rooftop arrays."

He also offers his perspective on solar project delivery trends. “We recognize that the EPC contractors and the solar-power developers are working closer together, since we are more often involved in the financing part of PV projects now. M+W is able to support not only an EPC model but also lease models, or we can even step into the investment together with co-financing banks to be the company which sells the power. This role supporting the independent power producer is much appreciated by solar power developers,” Engelhard notes.

In contrast to most other countries, feed-in tariffs play a very limited role in the U.S. The primary drivers of solar-power investment in the U.S. are the federal investment tax credit (ITC) and renewable portfolio standards. The ITC had been scheduled to drop to 10% from 30% in January 2017. But in December 2015, Congress passed an extension keeping it at 30% through 2020.

“The long-term extension of the ITC will not only support continued solar demand, it will also give firms serving the industry the long-term visibility they need to invest in their solar business,” says Justin Baca, vice president of markets and research at the Solar Energy Industries Association. “This year, solar will be the largest single source of new generating capacity of any kind [in the U.S.]. “The cost of electricity from a new solar plant can be lower than the cost of electricity from a new natural-gas plant."

“What we see also in the U.S. are procurements driven by renewable portfolio standards,” says Baca. "Utilities are issuing RFPs to procure solar on a competitive basis. A bunch of solar companies will bid on projects in Texas, Nevada, California and Arizona. We’re seeing incredibly low prices.”

Amec is building Mesquite Solar 2 and 3, a 345-MW solar plant in Arizona, for Sempra, It features panels made by Trina Solar and Jinko Solar. “We’re starting to see quite a bit of opportunity for next year. We’re signing some and negotiating others,” says Tom Dodson, president of power and process in the Americas for Amec Foster Wheeler, the leading solar power contractor in the U.S., according to ENR’s Top 400 Contractors.

Another major segment of the solar PV market is represented by so-called third-party developers, which take two forms. One is the power-purchase-agreement model, in which the installer-developer builds a solar system on a homeowner’s property at no cost to the homeowner-customer. The solar energy produced offsets the customer’s electric utility bill, and the developer sells the power generated to the customer at a fixed rate, usually lower than the local utility's. Another model is based on leasing: The customer contracts with the installer-developer and pays for the solar system over years or decades.

One of the largest third-party solar developers is SolarCity, which also manufactures panels. The 13,000-employee company has installed 2.17 GW of solar systems, including 870 MW in 2015, in 27 states during its decade of operation.

“We expand into states where we can offer solar at a lower cost than the current electricity rate,” says Jonathan Bass, vice president of communications for SolarCity. “Net metering is currently available in over 40 states and is in effect for the states we serve. While electricity rates vary by state, areas that have a higher electricity rate provide better economics for solar, allowing solar customers to pay for their solar energy at a lower price than provided by their local utility.”

World Projects Examples

Many large solar PV projects are being developed around the world.

The Quaid-e-Azam Solar Power Park, located in Pakistan’s Cholistan Desert, already is producing 100 MW of power. Built by China’s Xinjiang SunOasis, it started supplying the national grid in August 2015. The second, 300-MW stage was constructed by China’s Zonergy, with a workforce of 2,000; it was expected to go on line in December 2015. The final, 600-MW phase is expected to be completed by 2017, which would make it the largest solar PV power plant in the world.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India Ltd., a unit of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, is planning on building one of the largest solar power plants in the world, with a capacity of 750 MW, in Madhya Pradesh. Spread over 3,750 acres, it will be developed in three phases of 250 MW each. The Delhi Metro Rail Corp. is expected to sign a power purchase agreement for 150 MW, with the remaining capacity procured by the state utility. Electricity generation from the first phase is expected to start in June 2017.

The introduction of feed-in tariffs in Egypt in 2014 has spurred interest from 180 firms seeking to develop solar and wind projects. The largest solar scheme being developed includes 2,000 MW of power plants as well as a photovoltaic-module manufacturing plant. The developer, Terra Solar Ventures, Bahrain, is composed of Swiss wealth management firm Terra Nex, RWE New Energy, Hareon Solar Technologies and a number of German tech companies. In 2015, Terra Sola signed an agreement with the Egyptian Electricity Holding Co.

Terra Nex will manage a fund made up of German investors to finance the projects, with Hareon supplying the solar modules and RWE operating the power plants. The overall project is expected to bring $3.5 billion of direct investment to Egypt and create 50,000 jobs.

The largest solar PV power plant operating in Latin America is the 160-MW Finis Terrae plant in Chile. It was built by Enel Green Power Chile at a cost of $270 million. Enel Green Power is constructing the Ituverava solar farm in Brazil; it has a capacity of 254 MW and is expected to be completed by late 2017. Acciona Energia is building the 247-MW El Romero Solar plant in Chile’s Atacama Desert; it is expected to go on line in 2017.

Mexico conducted is first electricity auction in March 2016, choosing seven solar and wind companies to receive 15-year contracts to develop and sell power to the state-owned utility Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE). The largest contract went to Enel Green Power, Italy, to develop three solar PV plants at an investment of $1 billion. Two of the plants—the 427-MW Villanueva and the 327-MW Villanueva 3—will be located in the state of Coahuila, and the 238-MW Don Jose plant will be situated in the state of Guanajuato. The plants are expected to begin operating by 2018.

Scott Lewis was Associate Editor of ENR.

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