The largest photovoltaic station in the world earned in Arizona

The Aqua Caliente power station, located in the district of Yuma in Arizona in April of this year, reached its designed capacity of 290 megawatts . It produces about 650 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year. The construction of the station cost $ 1.8 billion. The area occupied by the station - 971 hectares. The electricity it generates is enough to meet the needs of a medium-sized city. The station is based on thin-film photovoltaic cells based on cadmium telluride.

Aqua Caliente today is the world's largest completed photovoltaic station. It surpasses only Topaz Solar Farm which is under construction in California - now its capacity has reached 300 megawatts, and its design capacity is 550 megawatts. Besides it, the recently completed solar power station in Ayvanpe (California) has comparable power, but it works according to a different principle - hundreds of thousands of mirrors concentrate sunlight on the central tower, heating the collector located in it, and electricity is generated by generators just like any other thermal power plant.

Solar power began to actively build in the United States at the beginning of this decade - four years ago, the largest solar power plant had a capacity of only 20 megawatts. In the southern United States, a hot, arid climate and plenty of free space are ideal conditions for solar energy. The power of Aqua Caliente is about 10 times less than that of typical large nuclear and thermal power plants, which usually give out several gigawatts. The world's largest Japanese nuclear power plant, Kasivadzaki-Kariva, had a capacity of 8.2 gigawatts (the station was shut down after Fukushima).
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However, the most powerful power plants on the planet are hydroelectric power plants. The largest of them - the Chinese hydroelectric power station "Three Gorges" on the Yangtze River produces 22.5 gigawatts. Its dam height of 185 meters has a length of 2309 meters. The reservoir area is 1045 km ² . When filling the reservoir, 1.3 million people were resettled - a record number in the history of hydropower.

Solar power plants are the fastest growing energy segment today. Annually the number of installed solar generating capacities increases by 50%. The efficiency of modern photocells is approaching 20%.