U.S. utility-scale solar power installations up 58% in 2013

At the end of April the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) announced that Agua Caliente, world’s largest photovoltaic (PV) solar power plant, had come online. The plant has a capacity of 290 megawatts (MW) of solar electricity and is located in Yuma County, Arizona.  By the end of next year, DoE expect all five solar PV plants that it has helped fund will be online with a combined capacity of 1,510 MW.

In February, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the world’s largest concentrating solar power plant (CSP), was formally opened.  It's located in the California Mojave Desert southwest of Las Vegas and has a planned gross capacity of 392 MW.   The three units are expected to be fully operational before the end of 2014.

The Solana Generating Station is a 280 MW concentrating solar power plant near Gila Bend, Arizona, is the largest parabolic trough plant in the world.  It is the first new U.S. solar plant with molten salt thermal energy storage.   Thermal storage enables it to operate for about six hours after the sun goes down.   It began delivering "night-time" solar power in 2013.

Also at the end of April NextEra Energy Resources dedicated the Genesis Solar Energy Center, a 250 MW concentrating solar power (CSP) plant near Blythe in Southern California that uses “dry-cooling” to reduce water consumption compared to wet-cooled CSP plants..  Parabolic trough collectors heat a heat transfer fluid to 390 degrees Celsius, which then heats water to create steam to drive the turbines. Cooling is provided by an air-cooled condenser.

The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is a 110 MW CSP plant located near Tonopah, Nevada. It is project is expected to be completed in 2014.   It also uses molten salt power with integrated storage and can operate for up to ten hours after the sun has gone down.

In 2013, 2,847 MW of utility-scale solar was installed in the U.S., a 58 percent increase over 2012.  In March 2014 utility-scale solar PV and concentrating solar power plants produced 891 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity, meeting 5.1% of California's electric demand during the month.