|
contents | business | |||||||||
| Acciona inaugurates world's highest production photovoltaic plant  Acciona Solar inaugurated the Monte Alto solar garden at Milagro (Navarre). It is the photovoltaic installation with the highest production capacity in the world (14 million kilowatt-hours per annum). It is also the one of greatest capacity under a system of shared ownership, with 9.55 megawatts (MWp) distributed among 753 owners. The total investment is around 65 million euros. The Monte Alto solar garden at Milagro is the seventh developed by Acciona Solar en Navarre and the ninth in Spain. Overall installed capacity is 23 MW, through around three thousand automated solar monitoring structures. They represent a total investment of 177 million euros shared among over 2,000 owners.The Monte Alto solar garden covers a surface area of 51 hectares on agricultural land near the locality of Milagro. It contains 889 solar structures, of which 864 are equipped with automated solar tracking. The rest are fixed structures adapted to the relief of the terrain. The first are mounted on Buskil trackers developed by Acciona Solar: 308 are of the K-12 model, with 11 kilowatts (kW) rated power each, with a total surface area of 100 m² to capture the sun's rays. The remaining 556 are of the K-6 model, with 5 kW rated power and 50 m2. The forecast 14 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) annual production of the solar garden is equivalent to the electricity consumption of around five thousand homes. The facility will avoid the emission of around 13,454 metric tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere, -taking a coal-fired power plant as a reference- with a cleaning effect on the atmosphere similar to that of 673,000 trees in the process of photosynthesis. Connected to the grid last December, this solar garden has constituted a major challenge for Acciona Solar in terms of technology and management. Its size meant, for example, the digging of 30 kilometres of ditches for electrical ducting, 90 kilometres of pipes and 3,900 metres into the earth to house the rods that support the trackers, plus the use of 6,000 m3 of concrete. The structures support a total of 52,706 photovoltaic modules, involving the use of more than 230,000 nuts, bolts and washers. write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Construction News :: home page |