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Greater Sandhill Solar Plant
The Greater Sandhill Solar Plant is a 19 megawatt ( MWAC) photovoltaic power station in the San Luis Valley, located near the town of Mosca, Colorado. It was the largest solar facility in the state when it came online at the end of 2010. The electricity is being sold to Public Service of Colorado, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, under a long-term power purchase agreement. Facility details The facility occupies about 200 acres of a 320 acre plot of water-constrained former agricultural land, and is sited adjacent to the Alamosa photovoltaic power plant which was completed two years earlier. It was developed and built by SunPower using the company's most-advanced high-efficiency technology. It contains about 50,000 modules which are mounted onto T-20 trackers. This tracker design was newly released in 2010, and was marketed as enabling the highest production. The plant is owned by Metlife and John Hancock Financial Services, which also partnered to finance the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Luis Valley
The San Luis Valley is a region in south-central Colorado with a small portion overlapping into New Mexico. The valley is approximately long and wide, extending from the Continental Divide on the northwest rim into New Mexico on the south. It contains 6 counties and portions of 3 others. It is an extensive high-elevation depositional basin of approximately with an average elevation of above sea level. The valley is a section of the Rio Grande Rift and is drained to the south by the Rio Grande, which rises in the San Juan Mountains to the west of the valley and flows south into New Mexico. The San Luis Valley has a cold desert climate but has substantial water resources from the Rio Grande and groundwater. The San Luis Valley was ceded to the United States by Mexico following the Mexican–American War. Hispanic settlers began moving north and settling in the valley after the United States made a treaty with the Utes and established a fort in the early 1850s. Prior to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Tracker
A solar tracker is a device that orients a payload toward the Sun. Payloads are usually solar panels, parabolic troughs, fresnel reflectors, lenses or the mirrors of a heliostat. For flat-panel photovoltaic systems, trackers are used to minimize the angle of incidence between the incoming sunlight and a photovoltaic panel, sometimes known as the cosine error. Reducing this angle increases the amount of energy produced from a fixed amount of installed power generating capacity. In standard photovoltaic applications, it was predicted in 2008-2009 that trackers could be used in at least 85% of commercial installations greater than one megawatt from 2009 to 2012. As the pricing, reliability and performance of single-axis trackers have improved, the systems have been installed in an increasing percentage of utility-scale projects. According to data from WoodMackenzie/GTM Research, global solar tracker shipments hit a record 14.5 gigawatts in 2017. This represents growth of 32 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photovoltaic Power Stations In Colorado
Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially used for electricity generation and as photosensors. A photovoltaic system employs solar modules, each comprising a number of solar cells, which generate electrical power. PV installations may be ground-mounted, rooftop-mounted, wall-mounted or floating. The mount may be fixed or use a solar tracker to follow the sun across the sky. Photovoltaic technology helps to mitigate climate change because it emits much less carbon dioxide than fossil fuels. Solar PV has specific advantages as an energy source: once installed, its operation generates no pollution and no greenhouse gas emissions, it shows scalability in respect of power needs and silicon has large availability in the Earth's crust, although other materials required in PV ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buildings And Structures In Alamosa County, Colorado
A building, or edifice, is an enclosed structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory (although there's also portable buildings). Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, land prices, ground conditions, specific uses, prestige, and aesthetic reasons. To better understand the term ''building'' compare the list of nonbuilding structures. Buildings serve several societal needs – primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) and the ''outside'' (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful). Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or canvasses of much artistic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renewable Energy In The United States
According to preliminary data from the US Energy Information Administration, renewable energy accounted for about 12.6% of total primary energy consumption and about 19.8% of the domestically produced electricity in the United States in 2020. Since 2019, wind power has been the largest producer of renewable electricity in the country. Wind power generated 337.9 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2020, which accounted for 8.4% of the nation's total electricity generation and 43.2% of the total renewable electricity generation. By October 2021, the United States nameplate generating capacity for wind power was 129,256 megawatts (MW). Texas remained firmly established as the leader in wind power deployment, followed by Iowa and Oklahoma as of year end 2020. Hydroelectric power is the second-largest producer of renewable electricity in the country, generating around 7.3% of the nation's total electricity in 2020 as well as 36.4% of the total renewable electricity generation. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Power In The United States
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2021, utility-scale solar power generated 115 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 2.8% of electricity in the United States. Total solar generation that year, including estimated small-scale photovoltaic generation, was 164 TWh. As of the end of 2021, the United States had 121 gigawatts (GW) of installed photovoltaic and concentrated solar power capacity combined. This capacity is exceeded only by China and the European Union. In 2021, 36% of all new electricity generation capacity in the country came from solar, surpassed only by wind with 41%. By 2015, solar employment had overtaken oil and gas as well as coal employment in the United States. In 2020, more than 230,000 Americans were employed in the solar industry. The United States conducted much early research in photovoltaics and concentrated solar power. It is among the top countries i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solar Power In Colorado
Solar power in Colorado has grown rapidly, partly because of one of the most favorable net metering laws in the country, with no limit on the number of users. The state was the first in the nation to establish a Renewable Portfolio Standard for its electric utilities. Colorado consumers typically obtain varying amounts of solar power from rooftop solar, community solar gardens, and larger solar farms. Colorado is home to many solar installers which are ranked annually by the amount of power installed. Several thousand people are employed in solar-energy-related activities throughout the state. A few companies have attempted to establish solar panel manufacturing operations in Colorado: including Abound Solar, Ascent Solar, and Primestar Solar. Colorado was the first state where Dow introduced some of the earliest solar shingles. ThColorado Solar Energy Industries Association (COSEIA) a state affiliate of the national non-profit Solar Energy Industries Association, suppo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Luis Valley Solar Ranch
The San Luis Valley Solar Ranch is a 30 megawatt ( MWAC) photovoltaic power station in the San Luis Valley, located near the town of Mosca, Colorado. It was the largest solar facility in the state when it came online at the end of 2011. The electricity is being sold to Public Service of Colorado, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, under a 20-year power purchase agreement. Facility details The facility occupies about 220 acres of a 320-acre plot of previous agricultural farmland, and is the third utility-scale solar project to be completed in the sunny and cool San Luis Valley. It was developed and financed, and continues to be owned and operated, by the Spanish renewable energy company Iberdrola (now Avangrid in the US) which previously completed two wind energy projects in the state. The plant consists of about 110,000 SunPower E19-series panels (each rated about 320 Wp and 19% efficiency) that are mounted on single-axis trackers. Iberdrola contracted with Sun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alamosa Photovoltaic Power Plant
Alamosa Photovoltaic Power Plant, is a 7.7 MWAC (8.2 MWp) photovoltaic power station located in San Luis Valley, Colorado. The facility was the largest in the United States to service a major public utility when its activation was announced on December 17, 2007. It was the second largest plant after the U.S. Air Force's Nellis Solar Power Plant which was inaugurated the same day. The electricity is being sold to Public Service of Colorado, a subsidiary of Xcel Energy, under a 20-year power purchase agreement. Facility details The plant occupies 82 acres of a 160 acre parcel of land adjacent to Highway 17 and existing transmission infrastructure near the community of Mosca. It was originally constructed as three units to evaluate and demonstrate three types of photovoltaic (PV) technology at utility-scale, including: 1) fixed-tilt, seasonally-adjustable, flat-panel PV; 2) single-axis-tracking, flat-panel PV; and 3) dual-axis-tracking, concentrator phot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Energy Information Administration
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System responsible for collecting, analyzing, and disseminating energy information to promote sound policymaking, efficient markets, and public understanding of energy and its interaction with the economy and the environment. EIA programs cover data on coal, petroleum, natural gas, electric, renewable and nuclear energy. EIA is part of the U.S. Department of Energy. Background The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 established EIA as the primary federal government authority on energy statistics and analysis, building upon systems and organizations first established in 1974 following the oil market disruption of 1973. EIA conducts a comprehensive data collection program that covers the full spectrum of energy sources, end uses, and energy flows; generates short- and long-term domestic and international energy projections; and performs informative energy analyses. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MW·h
A kilowatt-hour (unit symbol: kW⋅h or kW h; commonly written as kWh) is a unit of energy: one kilowatt of power for one hour. In terms of SI derived units with special names, it equals 3.6 megajoules (MJ). Kilowatt-hours are a common billing unit for electrical energy delivered to consumers by electric utilities. Definition The kilowatt-hour is a composite unit of energy equal to one kilowatt (kW) sustained for (multiplied by) one hour. Expressed in the standard unit of energy in the International System of Units (SI), the joule (symbol J), it is equal to 3,600 kilojoules or 3.6 MJ."Half-high dots or spaces are used to express a derived unit formed from two or more other units by multiplication.", Barry N. Taylor. (2001 ed.''The International System of Units.'' (Special publication 330). Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology. 20. Unit representations A widely used representation of the kilowatt-hour is "kWh", derived from its compone ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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