Green Wombat

photo: green wombat

Less than a week after PowerLight (SPWR) opened an 11-megawatt solar power plant in Portugal, the Berkeley, California-based company said today it will build a third photovoltaic solar power station in Spain. The newest project is a 4.8-megawatt plant to be constructed north of Seville and about 105 miles east of the Serpa, Portugal, facility that opened last Wednesday. As with the Serpa plant, which was financed by GE Energy Financial Services (GE), PowerLight will design and build the plant, which will cover about 50 acres with thousands of solar panels that track the sun. The project will be developed, owned and operated by two Spanish companies,  Agrupacion Solar Llerena-Badajoz 1 and Solarpack Corporacion Tecnologica. PowerLight, a subsidiary of solar panel maker SunPower, is already building two other Spanish PV solar plants in the 20-megawatt range. Like Portugal, Spain promotes renewable energy with a feed-in tariff that guarantees solar power plant developers a premium rate for the electricity they produce over a long-term contract.