The biggest solar-plus-storage project in the US just came online.

[Checkthisout]

Sorry, solar doesn't cut it. Amazon is intending building Nukes on the old Hanford site in order to power their data centers.

Amazon offers $334M for nuclear reactors to be built at Hanford

The small modular reactor could reestablish nuclear power as an alternative energy source, with the Washington-based company as its biggest investor.

www.cascadepbs.org

You'll have to do some sleuth but the area where this is located, the electricity from the local utility is 2.5cents per Kwh to normal everyday retail customers but so many companies have built data centers and crypto mining setups that they are beginning to run out of power. Amazon is choosing to go with nukes instead of solar and wind to meet the needed capacity.

 

[EPicTony]

Go to googlemaps and view the PV fields, they are all pointing EAST. I'm confused because I always though due SOUTH was the best direction. Am I missing something ???? On maps search for Edwards AF base, zoom out and just west of Edwards you will see the panels.

 

[42OhmsPA]

Go to googlemaps and view the PV fields, they are all pointing EAST. I'm confused because I always though due SOUTH was the best direction. Am I missing something ???? On maps search for Edwards AF base, zoom out and just west of Edwards you will see the panels.

Is it possible they are using trackers and the imagery was from the morning?

 

[doityourself2021]

420 is on it, with trackers.. as Sun Rise is East, makes sense, I know my trackers at end of day, turn from the West back to the East for the next Sun Rise and follow the path of the best light...for PV generation..

 

[EPicTony]

Is it possible they are using trackers and the imagery was from the morning?

I guess it is possible but that's a lot of trackers for 1.9 million panels......

 

[Brucey]

"As solar makes up a bigger and bigger share of grid power, battery storage is needed to soak up surplus daytime energy and make it available for use later in the day. That’s why solar facilities are increasingly co-located with battery plants: Photovoltaics plus storage is the leading hybrid renewables combination."

Sounds like they want to start charging the batteries first thing in the morning so they are ready for discharge in the late afternoon (and potentially other revenue generation like grid stabilization services etc).

 

[ksmithaz1]

IMNSHO trackers are kind of dumb. Looking at the power curves based on static placement of panels facing various directions, I'm not sure you are going to get a 20% overall improvement in output. Light Blue is west (slightly S) facing, with an optimal tilt, The 4 other lines face SSE. with a sub-optimal tilts. Dark blue is laying flat. There is a shadow from my chimney in the W panels around 1530-1600. We note this was 12/18 pretty much the shortest solar day of the year. Note: A/B-PV1/2 are 8x455, A-PV3 is 12x410, B-PV3 is 14x410, so the string outputs are not apples to apples.

What you get ends up being about a 60 minute window of about 1/2 peak output over 8-9 hours. That is not close to 20%, but wait, there is more.

So lets assume we put my W facing array on a big expensive tracking setup. 12 panels, now I need to make sure I have good line of sight to the sun over a 180 degree arc E-W. Problem is I have 5 arrays I will have to locate them so all 6 arrays have an unobstructed arc which takes abundantly more real estate since they have to have a very wide separation to accomplish this without getting in each other's way!

So IMNSHO trackers really don't scale well, and require clear space around a 180 degree arc. And it gets even worse . . . as summer hits that graph expands from 0800-1700 to 0600-2000. The improvement window from tracking also expands to 90ish minutes, over 14 hours of daylight, and the percentage improvement drops even further, as the peak output widens over the time frame.

I personally would invest the money and effort into 20% more panels and batteries, and engineer your panel/string placement to bring up the curve in the evening/morning (as appropriate, to stretch your output) with a portion of your panels. Since summer, late afternoon is the worst time here for energy, I have the west facing string maintaining output for an extra boost during that time frame, to keep from dipping into my batteries.

The only use I could see for a tracker is if you can only have a single small array and you have to squeeze the maximum output from it, ottherwise I think you are just creating a lot of complication and effort for a minimal return.