Utility-Scale Solar Installations from Standardized Clusters

摘要

A rapidly growing number of utilities, municipalities, and commercial entities are building utility-scale solar installations, to meet peak load requirements, to reduce and hedge current and future energy costs, to address renewable portfolio standards and/or to earn energy tax credits. Despite the large potential market, virtually all utility-scale solar installations are still custom-designed and engineered for each new location. The unpredictability of construction, output and rate of return make it extremely difficult to understand how and when these investments will pay off. In a system developed by SOLON Corporation, utility-scale solar installations are constructed from identical, one-megawatt clusters, each of which consists of solar modules, trackers, conversion equipment and monitoring systems. The cluster design, which is optimized for efficient energy output, enables faster construction using lean manufacturing techniques common to factory production. The use of pre-configured clusters provides predictable peak energy output, greatly reduces uncertainty in design and construction and considerably lowers investment risk. In this paper we discuss the drivers for the cluster-based construction methodology and the benefits of the design.