How big will rooftop solar PV facilities become?

Veolia Environnement and Clairvoyant Energy are currently building a 10 MW plant on the General Motors (GM) manufacturing plant in Zaragoza, which produces around half a million cars per year. The plant will be owned by a joint venture formed by Veolia Environnement, Clairvoyant Energy and Aragón's government.

The plant developers believe that the facility willl generate around 15 m kWh per year, enough to power 4,600 homes per year. The facility will sell its electricity to Endesa and will be ready in September 2008.

The plant will have 85,000 solar panels totalling 183,000 square meters and will prevent the emission of 6,700 tonnes of CO2 per year.

The facility will be GM's third in the world. Mr Carl-Peter Forster, GM President for Europe has said that the company will assess the results of the plant in order to see whether the project can be replicated on GM's ten manufacturing plants in Europe, besides its eight component factories.

Uni-Solar and Velcro
Likewise, Mr David Hardee, Clairvoyant Energy's Executive Director said the they are being able to lower costs by using Uni-Solar technology and velctro, with an installation rate of almost 2,000 panels per day.

How big will solar facilities become in the future? Nobody knows. What is for sure is that rooftop facilities make more sense than the gigantic plants that are being build far away from the population centers, as the environmental and visual impacts of these plants tend to be lower, and so are the electricity transportation losses.

For additional information:
www.veolia.com
www.clairvoyantenergy.com
http://www.gmeurope.com