With 600,000 parabolic mirrors generating 150 MW, Andasol, located (as the name would suggest) in the heart of the Guadix plateau in Andalucia, is the largest solar power plant in the world. On its original commissioning in 2009, it also became the first plant of its kind in Europe, a parabolic trough plant, whereby the mirrors focus the sun's energy onto absorption pipes containing oil, which is heated and in turn is used to heat water to form steam for power generation. Energy is generated day and night by storage of the excess thermal energy using molten salts, thus bypassing one of the core obstacles opposing more the conventional solar PV technologies.
Andasol3 went online late last year, expanding the already-huge facility to the size of 210 football pitches; a good example of Prof David Mackay's notion that if you want renewables to play a big role in the energy mix you have to build big. The plant is a joint-venture with ownership split between several german companies (Solar Millennium, MAN Ferrostaal AG, Stadtwerke Munchen and RWE Innogy & RheinEnergie AG), a €900m investment which is made ultimately affordable to the end consumer by Spain's feed-in tariffs, a fixed government subsidy which is guaranteed for 25 years. Future builds, however, are unlikely to receive such charity.
In the UK, the government has just proposed plans to slash feed-in tariffs given to small-scale solar in half, and countries such as Spain, who are feeling the squeeze of the economic recession even more, are likely to follow suit. The likely result of present and future cuts will be an ever-growing disparity between investment and subsidies, with a predicted shortfall by 2015 of $5bn in the UK, and $6bn. These are troubling times for the renewable energy industry and, in Europe at least, threaten to push solar firmly into the shade.
Reference article: World's largest solar plant powers up. The Independent 01/01/12 (link)
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