ACCIONA Puts 46 MW PV Project (World's Largest) in to Service (Portugal)

http://www.solarbuzz.com/News/NewsEUPR558.htm

CIONA Energy has put into service its 46 megawatt photovoltaic power plant in Amareleja (Moura, Portugal), the largest of its kind in the world.

Amareleja is capable of producing 93 million KW/h a year equivalent to the electrical consumption of over 30 million Portuguese households and will avoid the 89,383 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year that would have otherwise been produced by the coal-fired power stations required to produce the same amount of power.

The plant covers a total area of 250 hectares, located in the parish of Amareleja in the municipality of Moura, in Portugal’s Alentejo region, not far from the border with Spain. It has 2,520 Buskil trackers (ACCIONA in-house technology), each with a surface of 142 m2, 13 meters long and 10.87 meters high. Each tracker has 104 polycrystalline silicon modules with a capacity of 170 and 180 Wp, and the trackers support a total 262,080 PV modules. The trackers follow the sun with an azimuthal rotation movement of 240 degrees, and a fixed inclination of 45 degrees.

The first 3 MW were installed at the end of 2007, and were connected provisionally in March 2008. This year has seen the installation of the remainder of the plant’s solar field and the construction of the evacuation line, and last week the plant was finally connected to the grid. The plant was constructed in the record time of just thirteen months.

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