Once maligned as one of America’s smoggiest cities, Los Angeles has cleaned up its act in a big way – and none too soon; for while a thick layer of smog may offer up beautiful sunsets, it tends to limit the amount of vital solar energy the city will need to reach its renewable energy target of 35 percent by 2020.
To that end, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) has announced it will team up with solar panel manufacturing company SolarWorld to build a 11.6 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic power station that, when operational, will generate enough clean, renewable solar energy to power 85,850 homes and avoid 290,000 metric tons of CO2 over 25 years.
SolarWorld USA will supply the 46,322 high-performance crystalline silicon solar panels used in the high desert Adelanto facility and the American-made inverters that will convert the station’s 11.6 MW DC current into the 10 MW AC power necessary for domestic household use.
LADWP will build and operate the station, which is expected produce 22,400 megawatt-hours (MWH) of solar electricity during its first year and 515,700 MWH over a 25-year period.
SolarWorld say their long experience in the field of solar energy technology and proven track record of innovation on large-scale solar farms will pay off with the Adelanto plant.
“The technical features of Adelanto are advanced, and the design requirements are more sophisticated than typical systems of this size,” says Raju Yenamandra, SolarWorld’s vice-president of sales. “But having built the world’s first 1 MW system in California in 1981 and adapted many system types since then, we look forward to once again demonstrating our project-engineering ingenuity.”
