India To Build World's Largest Solar Plant

ananyo writes "India has pledged to build the world's most powerful solar plant. With a nominal capacity of 4,000 megawatts, comparable to that of four full-size nuclear reactors, the 'ultra mega' project will be more than ten times larger than any other solar project built so far, and it will spread over 77 square kilometres of land — greater than the island of Manhattan. Six state-owned companies have formed a joint venture to execute the project, which they say can be completed in seven years at a projected cost of US$4.4 billion. The proposed location is near Sambhar Salt Lake in the northern state of Rajasthan."

Re:77 sq kilos seems like a lot, but it isn't so b

[symbolset]

Line losses would ruin efficiency though. I'm pretty sure they're set on building it in India.

Re:I love numbers but....

[R3d M3rcury]

You're probably right. But let's be clear--we definitely don't want another Long Island [bravotv.com].

Re:77 sq kilos seems like a lot, but it isn't so b

[symbolset]

Two nuns and a lumberjack walk into a bar. The first nun turns to the lumberjack and asks "do you know how to ruin a joke?"

Re:I love numbers but....

[sir-gold]

Your assumption is that the panels will be edge-to-edge, covering 100% of that 77 sqkm area. Given that the panels need to tilt for efficiency, and you obviously can't tilt a single 77sqkm panel, there has to be some gap between each independently-tiltable set of panels.

Also, industrial-scale solar collection is usually done using focusing mirrors and liquid sodium, not PV panels

I like that you put forth the effort to do the math though