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The Blue Wing Solar Project: “Truly Utility-Scale”
16 November, 2010ERIC WESOFF
The Blue Wing Solar Project: “Truly Utility-Scale”
223,900 First Solar panels and 4,444 racks on 113 acres producing 16 megawatts.
Recently, in what is destined to be a long series of profiles of solar projects bigger than ten megawatts, we looked at Agile Energy’s efforts to develop a 50 megawatt project in Ohio called Turning Point Solar. That project is still in the development stage. This week, we look at Blue Wing.
The Blue Wing solar farm near San Antonio, Texas is operational and producing 16.6 megawatts of DC power (14.4 megawatts AC). It’s the largest solar photovoltaic (PV) facility in Texas and the third largest PV farm in the U.S. The amount of generation from the facility is approximately 25,000 megawatt-hours.
The installation includes a 500-kilowatt demonstration facility where an assortment of thin film and crystalline silicon PV modules as well as a concentrating PV unit have been installed for research and comparison purposes. The project developer did not divulge the CPV vendor although we’re looking into that.
juwi solar, with U.S. operations based out of Boulder, Colorado developed, designed and built Blue Wing. The project is owned by Duke Energy and the power is purchased by CPS Energy under a 30-year power purchase agreement. To-date juwi solar had developed and built three of the largest solar power plants in the nation; the 15 megawatt Jacksonville Solar in Florida, the 12 megawatt Wyandot Solar in Ohio, and the 16 megawatt Blue Wing.