A Review of Total Investment Cost, Dollar per Watt Peak and Euro per Watt Peak for Large Solar Photovoltaic Power Plant Projects.
A reader of SolarByTheWatt.com commented in a letter to us (via the Contact Us page/form) on how important it is for publications when price of solar photovoltaic is discussed – dollar per watt – to point out the difference between cost of solar just for the modules or panels and the cost of completing a whole system.
The price to complete a whole system in addition to the price of panels will include price of mounting, installation hardware, wiring, junction boxes, disconnects, price of the inverter or inverters, wiring and disconnect boxes from inverter to grid switch box, price of installation service (usually specifically trained and certified professionals are involved). In the case of a large scale projects the part of the project involving connection to the grid can be of substantial value too. In these project the price of the land used and all permits for the land and for the utility project also add to the cost.
While the break down of these expenses can be harder to study (one needs to find internal data from different projects) we thought that it is possible for many large project to find the overall costs and get to an indicative price per watt for solar power in terms of complete projects.
We also thought that focusing on as large projects as possible will let us minimize the error of rounding and approximation some of news articles might have made.
We have reviewed different announcements that indicate the price dollar per watt of complete projects.
Thought there is a lot of information about what the largest solar photovoltaic plants in the world are it has been difficult for us to find specific cost, investment information about many of them. The readers are welcome to contribute through comments or on our Contact Us page/form with links to articles specifying cost of projects.
Here is the table of results we have gathered:
|
Project |
Peak Power, MWp |
Cost, Euro, millions |
Euro / Wp |
US$ / Wp |
|
Waldpolenz Solar Park |
40 |
130 |
3.25 |
4.23 |
|
Amareleja, Moura, Portugal |
62 |
250 |
4.03 |
5.24 |
|
SinAn Power Plant |
24 |
110 |
4.58 |
5.96 |
|
Beneixama photovoltaic power plant |
30 |
150 |
5.00 |
6.50 |
|
Arnedo Solar Plant |
34 |
181 |
5.32 |
6.92 |
|
Nellis Solar Power Plant |
14 |
77 |
5.49 |
7.14 |
In our results table you can see the name of the project included, peak power or the capacity of the power station in MW (MWp), investment cost in million of Euros – many of the large projects for which capacity and investment cost data was available were in Europe and the articles report the prices in Euros, cost Euro per watt peak, US dollar per watt peak – we used a 1.3 factor (close to the exchange rate at the moment EUR to USD) to get this number which we thought will be useful for anyone used to work in USD as a currency. We ordered the projects in ascending price per watt.
None of the prices we are seeing in the results are very surprising. Different articles mention about a commonly expected price of about US$ 6 – 8 per watt for industrial (utility) size projects. Many specialists involved in the industry, especially in Europe lately talk about bids that projects get in the range of 4 – 5 Euros per watt, approximately US$ 5 – 6.60 per watt.
Related articles:
Lowest Solar Panel Prices Per Watt 2009-02-24
Solar Energy Land Area Efficiency or How Many Acres per MW, kWp per Acre
A Short Science Lesson for Journalists – Watts, Kilowatts, Megawatts, Kilowatt Hours
Resources used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moura_photovoltaic_power_station
http://www.xltelenergy.com/PRESS%20RELEASE%20170209.pdf
http://www.conergy.de/en/DesktopDefault.aspx/tabid-181/316_read-9306/
http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/12834
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellis_Solar_Power_Plant
Related Reading:
World’s Largest Solar PV Project to Power Nevada Military Base
Two Large Solar Plants Planned in California – NYTimes.com
Mega Solar: the World’s 13 Biggest Solar Thermal Energy Projects
Evergreen Solar targets utility-scale projects
Improvements to DOE Grant Program
H2M to Complete Work on Largest Solar Panel Installation for a …
SolarByTheWatt.com
3 Comments
SolarByTheWatt_com said :
October 16, 2009 at 4:20 am
This is a comment by SolarByTheWatt.com ourselves. We are finding more info on the finances of large scale projects and we do not want to re-edit the article. Eventually if we find a lot more info along the way or if the readers point us to such info we can publish more articles on this. For now will will add more findings here in the comments:
This article in the Indian online publication Financial Express
http://www.financialexpress.com/news/qatar-to-build-500-m-solar-power-plant/437936/
talks about a 100MW project that is expected to cost USD 500 million. That makes for 5 US dollar per watt peak.
One would think the Gulf nations with them being cash rich and having very favorable solar insolation they would really be very interested in building large scale solar – especially if the whole world at some point will pool away from oil which on its part is the greatest benefactor for the region.
SolarByTheWatt_com said :
October 16, 2009 at 4:21 am
There were a couple of stories in the online editions of different newspapers on this project. None of them is mentioning a dollar mount of the investment.
It is an interesting pattern that we are noticing while trying to gather and match size (capacity, peak power in MW) of the projects and the amount of capital involved in building the power plant, so we can figure out cost per watt – and that is, it has been much easier to find cost data for the European projects and much harder for the US based ones.
It is possible that because the European ones are getting government subsidies there to be some requirement for them to disclose these numbers.
Anyway for many of the large US projects only the size (MW) is available not the money spent on building them.
Here is a link to a version if the story that at least mentions an estimate by an analyst:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN0744128520090407
$70 – $90 million for 17 MW makes about $4.12 to $5.30 per watt.
SolarByTheWatt_com said :
October 16, 2009 at 4:21 am
We are adding more links to projects that we hear about where we can easily tell the amount of money spent and the peak capacity.
http://buildingctgreen.com/AuggieVGreenBlog/?p=462
This project is owned by the watch manufacturer Timex. It cost them $2.5 million for 244 kW capacity. That is about $10.25 per watt. Obviously smaller projects cost more. It is possible the characteristics of the specific solar photovoltaic projects to influence the price per watt. We are not surprised we find such great differences in prices between projects – from about $ per watt in some projects in Europe to above $10 per watt here in the states. Especially for smaller projects cost upwards of $8 per watt is not uncommon and some installation companies mention about ball park figures up to about $15 per watt for a complete system when it goes about smaller systems like residential ones.
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