The Agua Caliente Solar Project in Arizona (USA) is officially the world’s largest photovoltaic power plant. Owned by NRG Energy and MidAmerican Solar, the plant will generate 290 megawatts at peak capacity.
The completion of Agua Caliente represents a series of recent achievements for LPO in bringing large-scale solar energy to Americans. In February, Secretary Moniz and I attended the dedication of Ivanpah, the world’s largest concentrating solar power plant (CSP), which was built with the help of a $1.6 billion Energy Department loan guarantee. Last fall, supported in part by a $1.4 billion loan guarantee, the Solana concentrating solar power plant started delivering “night-time solar” to Arizona homes and businesses as the world’s largest solar facility with thermal storage. And just last week the 250 MW Genesis CSP project, which was issued a $852 million loan guarantee, came online in Riverside County, CA.
These records are even more impressive when compared to where we were prior to 2009. At that time, the largest PV plant in the U.S. was a 14 MW installation at Nellis Air Force Base. A commercial-scale CSP plant had not been built in the U.S. in two decades. But in just five short years, we have increased the scale that PV plants can achieve by twentyfold and we have also made tremendous technological advances in concentrating solar power and thermal storage.
Credit : Energy.gov
Picture Credit : Google
