Showing results for: utility-scale solar plant Articles
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Part 2: Historic and Current Market Risk Assessment for Utility-Scale PV Solar Lenders and Insurers
Utility-scale PV market changes happen rapidly. These shifts have accelerated over the decades, but the past decade has been particularly transformative. One significant change is utility-scale solar power plants growing in size. 1 MW was about average for a project in North America at that time. Now average plant sizes are around 100 MW or more, some even approaching 1 ...
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ERCOT steps up capacity to make Texas land of opportunity for PV
An increase in capacity and potentially of reserve margin in Texas shows that the state which traditionally has relied on fossil fuels and natural gas continues to accommodate and look for solar. The Electric Reliability council of Texas recently announced that they are increasing the capacity value for solar to 100 percent capacity for up to 200 megawatts of installed capacity. After that, the ...
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Are inverters PV’s Achilles Heel?
The organizers of the Utility Scale PV Yield Optimization Conference & Expo, gained exclusive access with Michael Levi, Senior Director Worldwide Marketing from Satcon to talk about the inverter market for utility solar projects, how they are positioning themselves in a competitive market and how reliable are these key components. Q1: What segment of the solar market are you targeting? ...
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PV plant costs fall 7% to threaten coal units; US court temporarily halts bifacial tariffs
Falling solar, wind costs pressure US coal, nuclear fundamentals Average costs for utility-scale solar plants have fallen by around 7% in the last 12 months, increasing the competitiveness of solar facilities against existing conventional U.S. plants, Lazard consultancy said in its 'Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis Version 13.0' report, published November 7. Lazard estimates ...
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What’s Your Risk Tolerance during Construction of a Utility-Scale PV Solar Power Plant? Active Stow vs. Passive Mitigation
Utility-scale engineering and construction projects are inherently risky. Large numbers of people independently working on a site, out in the weather, around dangerous machinery large and small, racing to finish the project as quickly as possible. Most Engineering, Procurement, and Engineering (EPCs) in the solar industry have the personnel safety issue solved. There are ongoing, sophisticated ...
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Flocking to a Utility-Scale PV O&M Solution
Operating and maintaining a utility-scale photovoltaic (PV) solar power plant is a time-consuming and expensive proposition. However, there’s been a unique innovation in PV plant operation – though it comes from a simple and decidedly old-school source. Sheep’s New Role in Lowering PV Plant Operations and Maintenance Costs You read that correctly. Sheep are now being used for ...
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All hail the DuraTrack HZ v3: Best-in-class extreme weather mitigation with array technologies
Extreme weather is a clear enemy of utility-scale photovoltaic power plants. A recent trend of increasingly costly extreme wind and hail disasters reinforces this point, wreaking havoc not only with the actual plants in terms of construction timelines and output, but on the availability and rates of commercial insurance for these properties. In choosing how to fight back, PV plants have two ...
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Array Technologies and DuraTrack at Roadrunner Solar
With more than 1.2 million solar panels, Texas’s Roadrunner solar plant is one of the largest of its kind in the world. In fact, by the time its second phase of construction is complete later this year, it will be the largest operational solar farm in Texas. The plant has created hundreds of local jobs and become a beacon in the march toward innovation and sustainability, promising to ...
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Lufft Partner supplied solar park in Egypt
Following the successful commissioning of a 64.1 MW Benban solar power plant in Egypt in December 2017, system integrator Gantner Instruments Environment Solutions GmbH announced that it will equip three more plants of the Benban complex with a solar monitoring system. The new solar systems have a total capacity of 166.5 MW. The chosen "Made in Germany" solution from Gantner is a tailor-made, ...
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Utility-Scale Solar: Maximizing Project Profitability with Trackers
Watching the prices recently for utility-scale solar power-purchase agreements has felt a bit like being a spectator at an ultra-competitive Olympic event, where each successive race delivers a new world record. The headline-grabbing 1.79 cents per kilowatt-hour tender announced in Saudi Arabia this past October is just one indicator of a global trend, in which PPA prices have been steadily ...
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French Utility EDF new solar plant in California
French Utility, EDF Energies Nouvelles, announced this Monday the implementation of the photovoltaic plant of Catalina through its American branch, EDF Renewable Energy. The construction of the photovoltaic plant started in May 2012 and started to be operational by December 2012. The plant has a 143 MW capacity and is located in the Mojave Desert in California. The solar plant is 360 hectares ...
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Part 3: Why PV Trackers Are a Critical Component of a Risk Profile for Utility-Scale PV Solar Lenders and Insurers
Every aspect of the PV solar project plays a part in risk. Plant design, available technology, and risk mitigation features that can be built into a tracker can affect all elements of a solar assets long-term risk profile. Trackers are one of the major inputs of the risk equation. In this final post of our 3-part series on risk mitigation for investors and insurers, we’ll talk about ...
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Charting economic climate
The economic climate affects our day-to-day lives. Work activities are intricately interconnected with social well-being which in turn effects family harmony and trickles on down to impact personal wherewithal. Still, 'climate' is what it is. There is nothing any of us alone can do about it. At the same time, however, how we think about it tends to shift the reality we experience day to day. ...
By Special-Lite
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How to grow a solar energy garden
Getting energy from the sun is a great idea. However, installing solar panels house-by-house is slow, costly and cumbersome, and downright inefficient if the goal is to bring solar to the masses. This problem troubled Paul Spencer after he built his own uber-efficient, custom solar home near Aspen, Colorado in 2004. The engineer and serial entrepreneur wondered how he could replicate his home ...
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Bifacial solar plants can generate 7% higher returns, US model shows
Machine learning models predict returns for U.S. bifacial plants are 2.5% to 7% higher than mono-facial designs, depending on the region, Itai Suez, Senior Solar Project Engineering Manager at developer EDP Renewables (EDPR), told the PV Operations Dallas 2019 conference. The market for bifacial solar modules looks set to take off this year as developers seek new ways to increase efficiency ...
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