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Solar power growth to outperform wind in 2013
Picture story
This year could be the first in which solar PV adds more megawatts to electricity grids than wind power, according to figures from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The company’s median forecast for solar PV capacity installed in 2013 estimates that 37 GW will be connected, compared to 34 GW of onshore wind and 1.7 GW of offshore wind.
This would mark the first year that PV has outperformed wind power – in 2012 wind added 47 GW, while PV added 31 GW, says Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The figures are partly due to a slowdown in the largest wind markets, China and the US, as well as cost reductions in PV. The company estimates that between now and 2030 the two technologies will provide almost equal contributions to annual new capacity additions.
One of the large-scale PV projects that has contributed to this increase in solar capacity is the 75 MW Kalkbult solar PV plant in the Northern Cape region of South Africa, which has recently been connected to the grid. The Scated Solar project was completed ahead of schedule, and was built under the first round of the South African Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme. The plant consists of 312,000 solar panels mounted on 156 km of substructure, inverters, transformers and a high voltage sub-station. The power from the grid-connected PV plant will be sold through a 20-year power purchase agreement with Eskom, the national utility company.
Finally, moving away from PV, the first unit of the Ivanpah solar electric generating system in the California’s Mojave Desert in the US (pictured) has been synchronised to the grid and is producing electricity. The concentrated solar power (CSP) project is joint-owned by NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy and Google. When completed, it will be the largest CSP plant in the world, at 392 MW.
Ivanpah.tif
The Ivanpah project has started to generate electricity
News Item details
Journal title: Energy World
Countries: Worldwide -
Organisation: Bloomberg
Subjects: Solar energy, Wind power, Electric utilities
