Time for a solar power reality check

Stan Beer
Sunday, 26 June 2011 20:05

Opinion and Analysis

The Federal Government has been waxing lyrical about a new $923 million photovoltaic solar power plant soon to commence construction in Australia. The new solar farm at Moree near the NSW-QLD border will occupy 1200 hectares (12 square kilometres) with a capacity of 150MW, making it the largest in the world. In the scheme of power generation, is this plant of any significance?

The largest solar power plant currently operating in the world - Sarnia in Canada - occupies 950 acres (about 385 hectares) has 1.3 million solar panels and nominally has a capacity of 80MW. However, because the sun only shines bright and high for a few hours each day, Sarnia has a capacity factor of just 17%, meaning that its true average output is just 13.6MW.

The capacity factor of the Moree solar farm, which will have 650,000 panels, should be marginally higher than the Sarnia plant given its proximity to more sunshine and newer generation panels. Therefore given a capacity factor of 20% (a reasonably generous assumption) the average output of the Moree plant should be about 20% of 150MW, which is 30MW.

According to the documentation of the Moree project, the new plant due for completion in 2015, will provide enough power for 45,000 homes, a town the size of Darwin - leaving the question of base load power aside.

The state of Victoria has a twin coal fired power plant complex called Loy Yang A and Loy Yang B, which together have a capacity of about 3300MW and a capacity factor of more than 90% giving an average output of about 3000MW, which serves the needs of half the state - about 3 million people.

To get the same output from solar would require 100 similar plants to Moree covering about 1200 square kilometres - and there would still be a need for conventional power plants - gas, coal, nuclear - to provide base load power when the sun doesn't shine or wind doesn't blow - unless anyone seriously thinks batteries could do the job.

Moree alone will cost around $1 billion, so to get the necessary output to service a state of say 6 million people (like Victoria) about 200 solar plants like Moree would be required costing around $200 billion!

Assuming any state had that kind of money and the huge tracts of free suitably located land needed, can anyone imagine the amount of energy and resources required to produce the 130 million solar panels?

No? well let me inform you.

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