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Price, Dollar Per Watt for Large Solar Photovoltaic Projects

SolarByTheWatt_com — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:52:12 +0000

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.

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Resources used:

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2007/02/phase-one-of-40-mw-german-solar-park-begun-47541

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

Solar Energy Land Area Efficiency or How Many Acres per MW, kWp per Acre

SolarByTheWatt.com — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 05:28:52 +0000

Solar power alongside the applauding it gets it is also being criticized by the opponents of it especially in terms of the different measures of efficiency – physical, economic (investment) and land area use efficiency. Land area use efficiency is the topic of this study. Let’s look at the definito0ns for the other measures of efficiency just to put our essay in proper context.

Physical efficiency for example is the measure of what portion of the light energy is being transformed to useful electric energy. That currently runs for different types of photovoltaic cell technologies between 8 and 30 and by some reports 38%. We will spare a separate article on the different technologies and their respective efficiency readings.

Economic efficiency or investment efficiency is the dollar cost per nominal generating watt power or simply dollar per watt peak ($/Wp). The investment efficiency can be calculated at the different stage of completeness of a solar photovoltaic system or component – cells, panels, installed systems, power stations. We want to dedicate special studies to the importance of these measures of efficiency. Be prepared to hear our opinion that economic, or investment efficiency is much more important to the useful implementation of this technology than physical efficiency is.

Land area use efficiency is the measure of how much land area is needed for certain capacity of nominal (peak) power of a solar photovoltaic power station (or smaller system). The units of measure used are usually:

acres per megawatt or acres per MW – the land area needed in acres per MW of generation; the way to calculate that is to divide the area used in a project in acres by the peak power of the project in MW;

kilowatt per acre or kW per acre – this is the amount of installed peak power in kW (1 MW = 1,000 kW) divided by the land area needed in acres.

The equivalent units of measure used more often overseas (incl. Europe) are using the derivatives of the metric system for land area – hectares (10,000 sq.meters) and decares (1,000 sq.meters) – hectares per MW, decares per MW and kW or MW per hectare or decare.

We wanted to find out what is the approximate land area efficiency of existing completed and planed projects or ones in progress. We looked first at some of the biggest solar photovoltaic projects around the world, tried to find out quoted figures for their peak capacity and land are used and calculate the land are use efficiency for them.

We also looked at publications discussing proposed project especially for technologies that are just emerging.

This is what we found out.

Some of the largest completed solar photovoltaic power plants, also called solar parks or fields, have area efficiency of about 4.5 to 8 acres per MW. This is when crystalline (mono-crystalline or poly-crystalline) technology cells, modules are used. With thin-film technologies the efficiency is about 10 to 13.5 acres per MW.

For comparison we also looked at data for some solar thermal project and we estimated land area use efficiency of about 5 to 11 acres per MW. The lower values were for projects involving Sterling engines as opposed to the more traditional technology of parabolic mirror throws heating oil in a tube.

Here is a table of our calculations with numbers in the other units of measure and also a list of the resources used.

Project No	Project	Capacity, DC Peak Power, Wp. MW	Land Used, hectares, 10,000 m2	Land Used, decares, 1000 m2
1	Olmedilla Photovoltaic Park	60	108	1,080
2	Puertollano Photovoltaic Park	47	150	1,500
3	Amareleja, Moura, Portugal	62	130	1,300
4	Waldpolenz Solar Park	40	220	2,200
5	Sempra Generation near Boulder City, NV	10	32	320
6	PG&E	6.4	64	640
7	Ivanpah	1,300	4250	42,500
8	Southern Ca. Edison, Stirling Eng. Systems	850	1830	18,300
9	Mojave Solar Park	553	2400	24,000

Project No	kWp/decare	kWp/acre	Acre/MW	Notes
1	55.6	224.83	4.45
2	31.3	126.80	7.89
3	47.7	193.00	5.18
4	18.2	73.58	13.59	Thin-film
5	31.3	80.00	12.50	Thin-film
6	10.0	81.00	12.35	Thin-film
7	30.6	123.79	8.08	Solar thermal
8	46.4	187.97	5.32	Sterling Engine
9	23.0	92.17	10.85	Solar Thermal

Resources used:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moura_photovoltaic_power_station

http://www.solarpay.com.au/mega-watts-to-nega-watts.html

http://www.jccm.es/fondosestructurales/fileadmin/user_upload/_temp_/00-NOTICIAS/2008_MARZO/07-03-08_LA_TRIBUNA-Renovalia_invierte_en_parque_solar_Puertollano.pdf

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2009/02/09/daily59.html?ana=from_rss

http://www.gizmag.com/go/4422/

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2007/07/pg-e-signs-agreement-with-solel-for-553-mw-of-solar-power-49448

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/_a/first_solar_finishes_10_mw_pv_power_plant_for_sempra_pge_to_buy_electricity/

http://www.abengoasolar.es/sites/solar/en/technologies/photovoltaic/concentration/index.html

http://www.energy.ca.gov/reti/steering/2008-06-18_meeting/SOLAR_FS-Utility-Scale_Photovoltai

http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2008/08/massive-solar-pv-deal.html

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel3/60/654/00017907.pdf?arnumber=17907

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SolarByTheWatt.com to Publish Info about Solar Panels and Other Products Focusing on Dollar Price per Watt

SolarByTheWatt.com — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:00:59 +0000

SolarByTheWatt.com starts to publish information about solar panels, inverters and other products focusing on dollar price per watt. Dollar price per watt in the solar power industry is believed to be a critical factor that will lead to even further acceptance of the technology and realizing its potential as a real, long term solution of numerous issues with securing reliable super clean way of generating energy on national and international basis.

Grid parity, or the potential for electricity generated from solar power stations, to compete in terms of price with other energy sources on the national electric grids, is a phenomena expected to critically turn the table so that solar ultimately becomes a major player in the efforts to find a clean, reliable, on mass scale, source of energy.

When we say price per watt we refer to the watts in Wp or watt-peak – the nominal or peak power output of a device (solar module, etc.)

SolarByTheWatt.com will collect data from solar products vendors and will publish price reviews and comparisons specifically focusing on the price per watt.

In addition SolarByTheWatt.com (Solar By The Watt dot Com) will publish news and commentary on the developments in the industry that leads to lower price of the solar cells and solar modules (panels).