Spain overtakes USA as world’s largest solar power generator

Hot on the heels of the nation’s famous World Cup victory comes the news that Spain is now outstripping the USA in solar energy production.

An article in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper claimed that Spain is now “a world leader in renewable energies”, adding that only China and America have built more dams to make use of hydro-electricity.

Spain’s wind farms are also an immediately recognisable feature of the country’s modern landscape, but the most important component of its renewable energy campaign are its solar plants. Given that Spain enjoys over 300 days of sunshine per year, its focus on harnessing the sun’s energy makes excellent ecological and economic sense.

With the inauguration of its latest solar power station in La Florida, Spain has raised its solar output to 432MW compared to the United States’ 422MW. The new La Florida plant uses the parabolic trough method. The Guardian’s environment correspondent, Stephen Burgen explains the method thus: “Sunlight is reflected off a parabolic mirror on to a fluid-filled tube. The heated liquid is then used to heat steam to run the turbines. The mirror rotates during the day to follow the sun’s movement.”

This latest solar farm covers 550,000 square metres, which is the size of 77 football pitches and will produce 50MW of power.

Spain, like the USA, is particularly suitable for solar farms. While it has many populous areas, it also has sufficient uninhabited space to support such enormous projects.

Navarra is already able to produce 75 per cent of its energy from a variety of renewable energy sources, including wind, solar, hydro and biomass and, with the constant addition of new projects, it is hoped that this situation will soon extend to the whole of Spain.

New post on at Friday, 23 July, 2010, 9:59 am and is archived in News about Spain. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or make a trackback from your web.