Owner/operator: Enbridge/First Solar The 80-MW Sarnia Solar Project is the world’s largest operational photovoltaic plant, with 1.3 million solar modules.
The facility utilizes First Solar’s proven thin-film photovoltaic (PV) technology, which has the lowest environmental footprint and the fastest energy payback of current PV technologies.
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| Courtesy: Enbridge Inc. |
A word-class solar plant in Canada? No doubt some readers may be caught off guard by this Top Plant choice. Well, forget about the “Frozen North” stereotypes of polar bears, dog sled races, and ice fishing that are sometimes associated with Canada. The Sarnia Solar Project is located in the southernmost part of Canada, just north of Detroit.
The Sarnia Solar Project has good solar resource, favorable access to the grid, strong community support, and low environmental impact. It also has compelling commercial features, including use of a proven technology, long-term power purchase agreements, and long-term operations and maintenance contracts, John Maniawski, Enbridge’s senior director, power generation business development, told POWER in October.
The Sarnia plant complements Enbridge’s renewable portfolio in Ontario, which includes three wind projects and two other solar projects, and “builds on the important community relationships that have been established with our crude oil terminal in Sarnia,” he said.
In 2009, Enbridge entered into an agreement with First Solar, a leading solar player, to expand the Sarnia facility from 20 MW to 80 MW, thereby creating what is, for now, the world’s largest photovoltaic (PV) facility. First Solar constructed the project under a fixed price engineering, procurement, and construction contract and provides operations and maintenance services.
CdTe PV Technology Benefits
The Sarnia Solar Project uses solar modules made with First Solar’s thin-film cadmium telluride (CdTe) PV technology, which has been used in more than 4,000 MW of installations in the U.S., Europe, and Canada. The panels are constructed for durability and easy installation and can be recycled at the end of their lifecycle (Figure 1).
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| 1. Leading the PV pack. First Solar’s thin-film cadmium telluride photovoltaic (PV) technology has one of the lowest environmental impacts of any PV technology and the fastest energy payback of current PV technologies. These attributes allow the technology to easily scale up. Courtesy: Enbridge Inc. |
CdTe PV has one of the lowest environmental impacts of any PV technology and the fastest energy payback of current PV technologies: under a year. (Energy payback is the time required for the output of an energy system to pay for the energy required to manufacture it.) The modules are manufactured in a state-of-the-art facility whose management systems are certified to ISO 9001:2008 quality and ISO 14001:2004 environmental standards.
“This technology is one of the lowest-cost technologies in the industry,” said Maniawski. “The cost of solar electricity continues to decline through improvements in technology and competition.”
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