JUN 10

I assume by "World’s Largest Solar Farm" you mean "World’s Largest PV Solar Farm". There is a 64MW Solar thermal plant near Boulder City, NV called Nevada Solar One.

You quoted the Guardian directly, "It is expected to supply 45MW of electricity every year." Unfortunately that doesn't make sense - it's like saying that a car will travel 45mph every year.

Watts (whether they be KW or MW or GW) measure how quickly energy flows, not how much of it will flow in total. To use the car analogy, it's the speed of the system. When talking about energy production it's usually referring to the top speed - the maximum rate of energy production at some point in time. With solar that usually occurs around noon on a cloudless day, dropping to zero during the night.

If this installation has a peak capacity of 45MW and it spent an hour under full sun, it would produce 45MWh (megawatt-hours) of energy. That's like a car travelling at 45mph for one hour... it goes 45 miles.

During a full day this sun-tracking array might get the equivalent of ten hours full sunlight, producing 450MWh of energy. Scale that up to a year and you'd be talking in the vicinity of 165GWh. That's the kind of figure the article should have used.

Those are reasonable estimates for 30 thousand homes: each home would get about 15KWh of energy each day. For comparison, the average consumption in my part of the world is 30KWh per day per household, while my home runs at 8KWh per day due to efficiency measures.

So thats 16k dollars per home and they use on average 500 dollars a year of electricity and makers quote up to 20 years lifespan for the cells. The economics doesnt seem to make much sense.

Pedant, i think the output was probably 45mWh which is a unit of work. Meaning the transfer of energy from one system to another. the average home in Australia uses something like 16kWh, and assuming that Portugal is about the same, then 30,000 homes would be 480,000,000 W/h which is 480mW...yeah, this is confusing me.

At over $10/watt of generating capacity, this is no where worthwhile. It doesn't even say that the panels have tracking, but are fixed installations. If indeed this was the price they paid, someone got jipped quite badly. And definitely, the silly correction of 45MW / yr should be fixed immediately. It should say, generates 45MW-year of electricity, or 45MW of power, period. These two numbers are indeed different, because 45MW-year entails capacity at night as well, which at 10 hour sunlight, means the generating capacity is actually 108MW. So storage is necessary. Don't forget capacity for solar is significantly different from capacity for base-line generators.

Hello,
I've noticed two "glitches" in the article:
1 - it's Alentejo, not Alantejo
2 - it's Moura, not Mouro.
Thank you.

In response to Hai:
Hi! I'm from Portugal, and I am very interested and excited about this project, since Portugal really doesn't have the same capabilites of producing energy that other countries have. By 2005, Patrick Monteiro tried to built an atomic power plant, but the project failed, and it wasn't that appealing to the general public. But this one seems to have concordance among the general public. Anyway, just wanted to inform you that the data in this article is indeed accurate. I've read the same exact data in Portuguese magazines a few times.
Greets

Solar energy makes sense because we are at the end of the fossil fuel era. As fossil fuels becomes more scarce, the price for them will continue to rise.

A few people here seem to be missing the point: Renewable energy has nothing to do with saving money. There will come a time when the finite resources we use for energy will be all but exhausted, and when that time comes cost will be the last of our worries. Add that to the drop in our carbon footprint and I'd say we have a pretty damn good reason for spending obscene amounts of money on technologies we don't yet need (but will).

Humans are primitive primates. They tend to care a lot about being the best, having the largest whatever, etc., etc. :-). They possess egos that hardly fit on this planet. We are simply too many.

Our governments already assure that lots of us are being killed prematurely by spreading lots of cheap and unhealthy food that causes heart failure and other diseases.

"we are at the end of the fossil fuel era."

are you kidding????
there is enough oil and gas in the united states to run 60 million vehicals and provide energy for 160 million homes for 60 years.
and if we convert the coal reserves into synfuels, we have 400 years worth of ewnergy, just in this country.
400 years does not sound anywhere near "out of fuel" to me.
the only thing standing between us and energy independence is the enviromentalist movement.

Cannon, your numbers don't add up. The United States imports 75% of the energy it uses. Right now, at this moment, the world's oil reserves have been overstated by as much as 50%. Think about what you said: there is enough oil and gas in the united states to run 60 million vehicles and provide energy for 160 million homes for 60 years. Wow. I think you just answered why we need renewable energy sources. In 60 years, we will be tapped out. And that is assuming that oil reserves worldwide are what has been officially reported and not exaggerated as some top oil men have stated.

Every parking lot in America could be a solar farm ... build canopies put solar panels on roofs park cars under.

The writing is on the crumbling walls in Detroit City. GM(America) bankrupt and slipping rapidly into the history books, along with Studebaker, Packard, and many other marques of great historical fame - we witness the death of the "Cheap Oil Era" in the U.S.A. SEE:http://uprooted.jessicareeder.com/2009/09/detroit-and-the-100-dollar-house/comment-page-1/#comment-3003
http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html and a paradigm shift of immense scope - whole philosophies of life erased by the hands of time. America not dead or dying, but certainly convulsing in an adolescence almost schizophrenic in nature, a bad girl gone worse,for the time being, mishandling her new physical maturity very badly, screwed by everyone on the block, and suffering economic venereal disease to be certain. Even China abuses her. South Western U.S. richest in Solar energy, denied her position by stubborn oil barons who waste resources in war in Afghanistan in hopes of a pipe-dream of Halliburton(Dubai)'s origin to steal Turkmenistan's oil from Russia and China - a laughable plot considering the distances involved, the logistics of the impractical come to mind, but the money is wasted none the less, and better spent here at home in the South Western U.S, on Solar/thermal power plants which have perpetuity on their side, as they never "run dry" like oil wells must do! the Prairie Wind Corridor remains on paper where the oil barons keep it through subterfuge amounting to treason against America and the Patriots there. Google, Torrent, the movie "Who Stole The Electric Car" and study it closely, it says more about the American Condition than first glance reveals. Who really is in control of America and what do they want? Fast ROI, no strings attached, and a certain future for very old money seem to be part of a "Fifth Column - hidden agenda", yet Detroit crumbles, New York rots from the center outwards and California in deep debt, resorts to salting good agricultural land to save a few fish of no real human consequence? America needs to get off oil, gracefully, and with Federal government interventions as part of a "Master Plan" of Manhattan Project proportions, but even Obama with all his glitter cannot live up to the task. Our Military totally dependent on foreign oil, and powerless, not a plane will fly if the Middle Eastern interests turn off the taps. Taps they hold in their hands, yet we persist, hooked on oil, unable to use super-insulations and conservation technologies to make Solar, Wind Wave, Tidal, Hydro, Geothermal and fission Power practical and viable in our rapidly fluxing "American Dream" lifestyle. We need electric bullet train intercity networks as a means of survival and to avoid following the precedent setting example, the fall of the U.S.S.R. - also thought to be impossible, at the time by the Soviet people. Beware America Hell's great Chasm can hold you too, and the rot in Detroit City bears a strong resemblance to the rubble of the former U.S.S.R. found here at home, on this very internet!