Green Wombat

photos: green wombat

Amid undulating hills dotted with olive groves and grazing sheep, the world’s most powerful photovoltaic solar energy station officially went online Wednesday outside Serpa, a village of white-washed, orange-tiled homes about 125 miles southeast of Lisbon, Portugal. Green Wombat was there for the dedication ceremony for the 11-megawatt power station – built by Berkeley, California-based PowerLight (SPWR) and financed and owned by GE Energy Financial Services (GE) – that is now powering 8,000 homes. PowerLight is known for its
commercial and residential rooftop solar arrays but has found a niche building utility-scale PV power stations in Europe. The reception given PowerLight and GE shows why countries like
Portgual, Spain and Germany have become attractive markets for solar power plants.   

Unlike the United States’ complex and undependable system of state and federal tax
credits for solar power, Portugal supports renewable energy with a simple "feed-in tariff" that will
pay GE a premium rate for 15 years for the electricity produced by the $75 million Serpa power plant. Portugal modeled its policy on Spain’s, were PowerLight is building two 20-megawatt range power stations. [Update: Powerlight has announced it will build a third PV solar power plant in Spain.]

Government support for renewable energy was on display at the opening ceremony for the plant – 52,000 solar panels that track the sun. As waiters served port and wine outside a tent set up for the dedication luncheon, Portugal’s minister for the economy and other government dignataries arrived to join PowerLight CEO Tom Dinwoodie, GE Energy Financial
Services managing director Kevin Walsh and executives from Catavento, the Portuguese renewable energy company that will manage the plant. Inside the tent, the officials made speeches against a backdrop of 150 acres of solar panels glistening in the sun. "We commend you for your leadership and
vision of clean energy and encourage you to continue to adopt policies and economic incentives that stimulate renewable energy production," Walsh said in his remarks, referring to Portugal’s left-leaning government as economics minister Manuel Pinho
languidly smoked a cigarette
at a nearby table. Portugal’s government has pledged to invest nearly $11 billion in renewable energy to reach its exceedingly ambitious target of getting 45 percent of its
energy from renewable sources like wind, waves and sun. (The day before the Serpa plant dedication Portuguese utility EDP announced it would acquire the U.S.’s biggest wind energy company, Horizon, for $2 billion from Goldman Sachs (GS) )

It’s hard, of course, to imagine anyone holding a four-course luncheon complete with fine Portuguese wines to celebrate the opening of, say, a new coal or gas-fired power plant. But the solar power plant’s appeal – for the government, the developers and the towns of the Alentejo region – are clear: Despite the substantial power it produces, the Serpa station is all but invisible. The panels take up considerable acreage but are only chest-high and make nary a sound. In fact, the plant looks more like a modern art installation than an industrial facility, blending in with the agricultural landscape of this grape and olive-growing region. Imagine dozens of such PV solar power stations spread across rural Europe  – the EU this month ordered greenhouse gas emissions be reduced 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 – and you can why the future looks bright to PowerLight and GE Energy Financial Services.