Many countries and territories have installed significant solar power capacity into their electrical grids to supplement or provide an alternative to conventional energy sources. Solar power plants use one of two technologies:
Yingli, formally Yingli Green Energy Holding Company Limited -. Yingli Green Energy Holding Company Limited, known as "Yingli Solar," is a solar panel manufacturer. Yingli Green Energy's manufacturing covers the photovoltaic value chain from ingot casting and wafering through solar cell production and solar panel assembly. Yingli's photovoltaic module capacity is 30 GWs.
Sarnia Photovoltaic Power Plant near Sarnia, Ontario, is Canada's largest photovoltaic plant with an installed capacity of 97 MWP (80 MWAC).
The Space Coast Next Generation Solar Energy Center is a 10 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic (PV) facility at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Commissioned in April 2010, the center is the result of a partnership between NASA and Florida Power & Light. The facility has approximately 35,000 solar photovoltaic panels from SunPower covering an area of 60 acres. The facility provides slightly less than one percent of the power needed to keep Kennedy Space Center up and running.
A rooftop solar power system, or rooftop PV system, is a photovoltaic (PV) system that has its electricity-generating solar panels mounted on the rooftop of a residential or commercial building or structure. The various components of such a system include photovoltaic modules, mounting systems, cables, solar inverters battery storage systems, charge controllers, monitoring systems, racking and mounting systems, energy management systems, net metering systems, disconnect switches, grounding equipment, protective devices, combiner boxes, weatherproof enclosures and other electrical accessories.
A photovoltaic power station, also known as a solar park, solar farm, or solar power plant, is a large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic power system designed for the supply of merchant power. They are different from most building-mounted and other decentralized solar power because they supply power at the utility level, rather than to a local user or users. Utility-scale solar is sometimes used to describe this type of project.
Huanghe Hydropower's Golmud Solar park is a 200 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power station located in Golmud, Qinghai Province, China. Construction began in August 2009, and it was commissioned on October 29, 2011. 80 MW was provided by Yingli. The project won the 2012 China Quality Power Project Award. Output is expected to be 317 GWh per year.
The Gabardan Solar Park is a 67.5 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power station in France. It has about 872,300 thin-film PV panels made by First Solar, and incorporates a 2 MW pilot plant using 11,100 solar trackers.
The Lauingen Energy Park is a 25.7–megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power station, located in Bavarian Swabia, Germany. It covers an area of 63 hectares and was commissioned in June 2010.
Qinghai Golmud Solar Park is a photovoltaic power station located in Golmud, Qinghai Province, China. It is 20.16 megawatt-peak (MWp), completed in 2011 by Longyuan Power. It uses 18.63079 MW of polycrystalline silicon solar cell modules and 1.530144 MW of amorphous silicon thin film modules. The polysilicon modules are by Yingli, and the amorphous ones are from Golden Sun Solar (GS-Solar). The capacity factor is expected to be 0.189.
The Hongsibao Solar Park is a 50 MWp photovoltaic power station located in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China. Most of it uses fixed tilt arrays, but a 2 MW tracker section was completed in 2011. The first stage, 20 MWp, was completed in 2010.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to solar energy:
Solar power in Illinois has been increasing, as the cost of photovoltaics has decreased. As of the end of 2020, Illinois had 465 megawatts (MW) of installed photovoltaic and concentrated solar power capacity combined employing over 5,200 jobs. Illinois adopted a net metering rule which allows customers generating up to 40 kW to use net metering, with the kilowatt hour surplus rolled over each month, and lost at the end of either April or October, as selected by the customer. In 2011, the limit was raised to 2 MW, but is not net metering, as the term is commonly known, as it uses two meters for systems larger than 40 kW.
The Perleberg Solar Park is a photovoltaic power station, with an installed capacity of 35 megawatts (MW). It uses 144,144 solar panels manufactured by Chinese company Yingli. The panels are mounted at a fixed angle on posts that are driven into the ground, at a former military airport.
The Huaneng Geermu Solar Park is a 50 MWp photovoltaic power station located in the Qinghai Province, in China. Most of it uses fixed tilt arrays, but has a 0.25 MW and a 5 MW single axis tracking section. Phase I is 5 MW, Phase II of the first section is 15 MW. 2 MW are amorphous silicon GS-50 modules from GS Solar rated 50 Watts each. The remaining 18 MW is polycrystalline silicon TW230(28)B modules from Tianwei New Energy PV Module rated 230 Watts each. A second section, called the Huaneng Geermu Phase II Solar Power Generation Project, 30 MWp, includes a 5 MW tracking section. The remaining 25 MW is fixed tilt. 15 MW uses TW235P60-FA2 modules from Tianwei New Energy PV Module, 10 MW uses YL235PT-29b modules from Yingli, and 5 MW uses TSM-235PC05 modules from Trina Solar. All of the modules are rated 235 Watts.
The Hatch Solar Energy Center is a 5.88 MWp (5.0 MWAC) photovoltaic power station. It was built by Blattner Energy using 84 dual-axis trackers and Amonix 7700 concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) panels, each of which contains 7,560 Fresnel lenses to concentrate sunlight 500 times onto multijunction photovoltaic cells. It was the largest CPV facility in North America when it was completed in 2011. The facility was subsequently repowered with SunPower panels that use high-efficiency monocrystalline silicon cells without concentration. The output is being sold to El Paso Electric, under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA). Annual electricity production is expected to be about 11,000 MW·h/year.
Solar Star is a 579-megawatt (MWAC) photovoltaic power station near Rosamond, California, United States, that is operated and maintained by SunPower Services. When completed in June 2015, it was the world's largest solar farm in terms of installed capacity, using 1.7 million solar panels, made by SunPower and spread over 13 square kilometers.
The CIAL Solar Power Project is a 50 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power station built at Cochin International Airport, India, by the company Cochin International Airport Limited (CIAL). Cochin International Airport became the first fully solar powered airport in the world with the commissioning the plant.
The Newberry Springs CPV Power Plant is a 1.68 MWp (1.5 MWAC) concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) power station in Newberry Springs, California. It was built by Blattner Energy using 60 dual-axis CX-S530 systems, each of which contains 12 CX-M500 modules. Each module contains 2,400 Fresnel lenses to concentrate sunlight 500 times onto multi-junction solar cells, allowing a greater efficiency than other photovoltaic power plants. The output is being sold to Southern California Edison under a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement.
The Techren Solar Project is a 400 megawatt (MWAC) solar photovoltaic power plant near Boulder City, Nevada. Electricity production began with completion of the two building phases in 2019–2020. The project is co-located with several other large solar power projects in the Eldorado Valley.
