Solar Records

A website with all the details of record-holding photovoltaic power generating stations can be found at www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php.

June 23, 2005: Shell announces the world’s largest single connected solar plant of 10 MWp, to be constructed at a former military site near Pocking, Bavaria. The solar plant will consist of approximately 62,500 modules and it will deliver electricity to almost 3,300 households in Germany per year. The 40 million euro power plant will consist of 6 sub plants of each 1,667 MWp, linked to each other in parallel to the 20kV grid of the utility E.on Bavaria. Modules will be mounted on aluminum structures, with a total length of approximately 16,5 km. The system has been especially designed to deliver an optimized energy output and follows the successful master-slave inverter concept, developed by Shell Solar. Construction will begin in August with completion expected in March 2006.
June 1, 2005. The biggest PV array in the world (6,7 MWp) is now on line in Mühlhausen, Duitsland. This solar generator is part of Solarpark Bavaria (10MWp).
Not the biggest, yet one of the most spectacular: the solar sail at Forum2004 in Barcelona, Spain. De installation (pergola) consists of 2,668 PV panels with a total generating power of 1.3 megawatt-peak. The official opening was on May 9, 2004 by King Carlos of Spanje. The size of the pergola is roughly that of a soccer field (112 x 50 meters).
 
January 1, 2003. The largest PV installation of the world is from now on ready to receive solar input in Hemau, Germany, (near Regensburg, Bavaria). The unit consists of a remarkable 32,740 PV panels. It is constructed by Voltwerk at a former munition depot. The panels were manufactured by BP Solar, and power is delivered to the electricity grid via 40 Siemens inverters. Total generating power is 4 megawatt-peak.
The state of Arizona, USA has one of the biggest PV installation in the world: the Springerville PV plant in the desert near Tucson. This giant installation owned by Tucson Electric Power Company counted at the beginning of 2006 a dazzling 34,980 PV panels with a performance of 4.6 megawatt-peak. The generating station is continuously expanded. There is plenty of desert left to add PV panels The limit peak power is 8 MW, imposed by the current capacity of the electrical transmission line. Image with kind permission of the Tucson Electric Power Company.

See www.globalsolar.com and www.tucsonelectric.com.

Ouput online at http://greenwatts.com/pages/solaroutput.asp
The record of the biggest solar roof in the world is still held by NUON in the Netherlands. The NUON-solar roof at the Floriade exhibition was inaugurated in April, 2002. The exhibition is over but the roof is still in place. The roof carries 19,383 PV panels. Total surface area is: 26,110 square meters. Peak power 2.3 megawatt-peak. Image kindly provided by NUON.
 
On January 21, 2003, the PV power station near Tudela, Navarra, Spain was officially opened. There are 12,602 PV panels which produce a staggering 1,2 megawatt-peak of power. The installation is equipped with 400 sun trackers (devices to turn the panels towards the sun all day).
2003: In clusters on the roof of the southern halls of the Trade Fair Center in Munich, Germany, a total of 63,000 square meters (7,560 Shell Solar PV panels) perform together 1.058 megawatt-peak. The north halls already carry 1 megawatt-peak, which makes the entire combination a giant: 2 megawatt-peak.
 
  In the exhibition at the Museum Boerhaave in Leiden (a museum devoted to the history of science and featuring countless historical scientific apparatus), you may find a heliostat, designed and built in Leiden around the year 1730 by the Dutch physicist Jacobus van der Cloesen. A heliostat is a sun tracker, or a device that follows the sun on its daily course in the sky. In those days, microscopes had little mirrors that one had to turn towards the sun in order to shed light on the tiny specimens. Maybe Jacobus got so tired from continuously adjusting his microscope that he invented this heliostat. Solar photovoltaic panels were unknown of course in those early days.

The Dutch electronics giant, Philips, has installed 312 PV panels on the facade of the parking garage at the Philips High Tech Campus. The performance of each PV panel is 132 watt-peak. Total performance is 41.184 watt-peak generated by 300 m2 PV panels!