Huge solar photovoltaic farm opens in France

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 26 May 2011, 17:22

A new photovoltaic park has opened in Les Mées, in the southern department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. Spread across 36 acres, the park, built by Belgian firm Enfinity, joins several other plants built on the vast Puimichel plateau. By the end of 2011, solar panels will cover 200 hectares and produce around 100MW, making it the biggest solar array in France. Enfinity's €70m investment has included work to preserve the landscape with space for grazing and a system without a concrete foundation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/p ... aic-france

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 27 Feb 2012, 04:13

Can you imagine the howls of protest from NIMBYs if anything near that scale of project were proposed here? Roll on smart meters and a blacklist of NIMBYs to be disconnected first.

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 27 Feb 2012, 07:32

kenneal - lagger wrote:Can you imagine the howls of protest from NIMBYs if anything near that scale of project were proposed here?

Quite reasonably to IMO. Look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg towards the end where it gives the fuel cost of 1 to 4 tons of coal per panel (unfortunately doesn't say what size panel). They state it would take 140,000 sq miles of panel for worlds electric supply and in 2007 only 4 sq miles had been set up.

From the picture in the article, there isn't much space for grazing, so that's just a PR sop. I suspect the description might have been dreamt up after the installation with some guy saying "Mon dieu, we can call ze space between ze panels 'grazing space'. Zat will scupper ze nimbies".

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 28 Feb 2012, 02:25

woodburner wrote:Quite reasonably to IMO. Look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg towards the end where it gives the fuel cost of 1 to 4 tons of coal per panel (unfortunately doesn't say what size panel).

Panels repay their embodied energy in four or five years out of a life of over 20 so the actual fuel used is irrelevant. I would be wary when such a broad range of embodied fuel is quoted and when it doesn't specify the size of panel. Is it a 25W or a 250W panel?

Yves75 · Post by **Yves75** » 28 Feb 2012, 11:24

Subsidies on operational cost is fundamentally wrong I think for producing devices (ok for using devices such a spublic transport), prime reason being the need to say "this solution makes sense", when it is very easy to be wrong in this labelling activity, prime example would be corn ethanol.
Top priority is to get out of fossiles, prime "economic tool" should be volume based taxes on fossiles.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 28 Feb 2012, 14:36

This may reassure small-scale pv-ers.

emordnilap · Post by **emordnilap** » 28 Feb 2012, 16:02

What we should do is eliminate all the subsidies for all the fuels and attach all the costs to all the fuels. With those two things, then you transform energy.

A sensible comment (as well as a rare admission of those subsidies) from - gasp - an American republican.

monster · Post by **monster** » 28 Feb 2012, 16:40

The problem with these discussions is they also assume that all the energy used to make solar panels is 100% fossil fuels

Have a look at this solar panel factory:

http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-green-e ... 4i-cardiff

Most panel making factories in Germany have plenty of solar panels on their roofs...

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 28 Feb 2012, 18:15

emordnilap wrote:This may reassure small-scale pv-ers.

Crikey that takes me back! I referenced that very paper in my masters' thesis!