Supersized solar farms are sprouting around the world
In a quest to cut the cost of clean electricity, power utilities around the world are supersizing their solar farms.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in southern Egypt, where what will be the world’s largest solar farm — a vast collection of more than 5 million photovoltaic panels — is now taking shape. When it’s completed next year, the $4 billion Benban solar park near Aswan will cover an area 10 times bigger than New York’s Central Park and generate up to 1.8 gigawatts of electricity.
That’s roughly the output of two nuclear power plants combined and almost double the planned capacity of the vast Villanueva facility now growing in the Mexican state of Coahuila — currently the largest facility in the Americas. (The largest solar farm in the U.S. is the 580-megawatt Solar Star facility near Los Angeles.)
China is planning to build a two-gigawatt solar farm in the northwestern province of Ningxia, and the state of Gujarat in western India recently gave the go-ahead for a five-gigawatt facility. Japan is even talking about putting a large-scale solar farm in space.
The bigger, the cheaper
“There are huge savings for larger projects,” says Benjamin Attia, a solar analyst with Wood Mackenzie, an energy consulting firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland. “Logistics, transport, construction and installation all benefit from scale economies. We’ll start to see more solar parks of one and two gigawatts, and potentially even 10 gigawatts in the future.”
The plunging cost of solar panels is part of the cost-savings equation. A 2017 report from the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the cost of photovoltaic systems shrank by a factor of five from 2010 to 2017. Even the punitive tariffs on Chinese solar panels enacted earlier this year by the Trump administration are unlikely to slow the spread of large-scale solar, which in the U.S. is already cheaper and much cleaner than coal.
“Governments have wised up,” says Attia. “They just want the cheapest, fastest way to add new electricity supplies. For nuclear, procurement can take a decade. For gas, it’s up to four years. If you’re talking solar and things go smoothly, you can build a reasonably large project in 18 months.”
Solar power is now a particularly attractive option for developing countries. When solar panels were more expensive, only rich nations could afford the subsidies and tax breaks that allowed solar farms to make financial sense. In many sunny parts of the world, solar power is now competitive with other power sources without financial assistance (and that’s also true for parts of the U.S. and other developed nations).
Another opportunity that exist for these solar farms is good paying employment for installers, maintenance mechanics, and repair outfits that are always needed. Solar energy will take fossil employment but the upside is the movement to solar employment.