Italian solar panel manufacturer SOLON S.p.A, subsidiary of the Berlin-based SOLON SE, and logistics company Interporto di Padova last week signed an agreement to construct the world’s largest photovoltaic based roof-mounted solar farm in Padua, Italy, with construction slated to begin in September this year.
Interporto di Padova will provide 250,000 square meters of rooftop on its logistics center for the installation. With a nominal capacity of 15 MW, the solar farm will generate 17 million kWh of clean, renewable electricity annually.
The project will employ up to 450 people and approximately 67,500 solar panels will be manufactured locally by the company. The power station is expected to generate enough energy for 5,000 households, resulting in reductions of 9,000 metric tons of carbon emissions and the equivalent about 3,200 metric tons of crude oil.
The Italian installation is an example of a growing trend of utilising large commercial rooftops to generate energy closer to the source where it is used. Line loss from traditional power stations can be anything up to 7%, depending on how far the electricity has to travel to reach the end consumer.
By utilising commercial rooftops for large solar farms, it also reduces the need to locate land dedicated for the purpose of power generation in an urban area, where such land is usually very scarce and what is available is very costly. In Australia, incentives such as feed in tariffs are presenting small solar farm opportunities in the A.C.T, South Australia and Queensland, with some other states soon to follow.
