World's Largest Solar PV Project Complete

RenewableEnergyWorld.com Editors
October 01, 2010 | 6 Comments

First Solar and Enbridge have completed the 60-MW expansion of a solar park in Sarnia, Ontario. At 80 MW of capacity, the project is now the largest in the world, according to the companies.

The project was initially part of First Solar's development portfolio. But the company sold it to Enbridge, a diversified energy development company looking to get into the solar space. Enbridge invested over CAD $300 million to expand the facility, which contains about 1.3 million cadmium telluride thin film modules from First Solar.

The Sarnia solar farm was the winner of last year's Excellence in Renewable Energy Utility-Scale Project of the Year Award. We'll be releasing details of how to nominate projects in November, so be on the lookout.

6 Comments

Terry Goldman
October 15, 2010

It's a great step, I would say. Solar energy projects should be invested, promoted and develeped. Solar is a good and safe alternative to the energy we use. We can save our planet with the help of such innovation instead of spoiling the environment by the current way of getting energy.

ANONYMOUS
October 6, 2010

Schneider Electric/Xantrex inverters seem to be the "preferred inverter of choice" for the largest Solar PV installations in the world due to their high reliability and outstanding performance. They were also used in the Strasskirchen Solar Park in Germany (third largest photovoltaic power station in the world), with an installed capacity of 55 MW using Q-Cells modules.

ANONYMOUS
October 6, 2010

Above comment is correct with respect to this being the largest PV plant in the world. However, lets keep in mind that Solar Thermal plants he mentions only work in very warm climates - parts of Spain, SoCAL, Nevada, Arizona etc. They will not work in Ontario or New Jersey etc. Solar Thermal plants tend to be built in the desert and eat up valuable water resources to wash the panels so that efficiency does not plummet. PV works everywhere and the occasional rainfall (or snowfall in Ontario) is enough to keep it clean. In fact, PV works MORE efficiently in the cold.

ANONYMOUS
October 6, 2010

This is an exciting project for Ontario - it was actually part of the RESOP (Renewable Offer Standard Offer Program), not part of FIT as the video states. Schneider Electric provided Xantrex brand GT500-MV inverters on the first 20MW which have proved themselves very reliable with over 99.8% uptime over the past year.

ANONYMOUS
October 6, 2010

Let us get this right! This is the world's largest PV SOLAR power plant but not the world's largest solar project.

SES has completed a 300 MWe solar Stirling engine power plant east of San Diego with expansion to 500 MWe. They are nearly done with building
a 500 MWe solar Stirling engine power plant outside of Los Angeles.

drs. Martin Kleintunte
October 6, 2010

A really big step ... 60MW. But remarkable is also the situation in the Netherlands. Two railwaystations will be covered with solar. b.a. Rotterdam with 6.400 modules and also Utrecht in the centre of Holland.

Not as big as Sarnia, Ontaria but.... in a small country as Holland.

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