Spain Beats United States For Biggest Solar Power Station

It now seems that Spain has been able to overtake the United States in terms of having the biggest solar power station with the new La Florida plant. Thus, the nation’s solar power production is now equivalent to the output of a nuclear power station.

Spain has opened the world’s largest solar power station ever. Before this, the United States had the biggest solar generator the world had ever seen. Spain is a world leader right now in renewable energies and has long been a producer of hydro electricity. The only places in the world that build more dams than Spain would be China and the United States. Spain is also very highly developed in wind power.

This new La Florida solar plant takes Spain’s solar output up to about 432MW. This is being compared to the United States output of 422MW. The plant is located at Alvarado, Badajoz in the west of the country. The way this station works is it collects solar energy by reflecting sunlight off a parabolic mirror onto a fluid filled tube. From there the heated liquid is then used to heat steam to run turbines. The mirrors, of course, rotate during the day to follow the sun’s movements.

The solar farm covers about 550,000 square meters. This is the size of around 77 football pitches. It produces some 50MW of power. There is, on average, 340 days of sunshine a year in Spain. Thus, solar is a lot more reliable than wind for this country. People believe that solar energy can go a long way towards weaning the country off of gas fired stations all together.