continuation of this 08 Nov 2014 post
https://www.econologie.com/forums/post278758.html#278758
Cestas: the construction site of Europe's largest solar power station
Monday 25 May 2015 / Written by: Fabien Maout lenergeek
It is at Cestas, 20 kilometers south of Bordeaux in the Gironde, that is currently built the largest solar park in Europe. A large-scale project that is fully in line with the energy transition. Commissioning is scheduled for October.
A titanic project ...
The Constantine power plant, built on the territory of the municipality of Cestas, will extend on 260 hectares. It's the equivalent of ... 300 football fields. In total, this represents 983.000 photovoltaic panels, placed on 16.500 support tables in steel and aluminum, but also more than 4.000 kilometers of electric cables - overhead and underground - intended to route the electricity produced to the network.
Currently, a team of twenty people poses between 6.000 and 7.000 panels per day. The project is being carried out by a consortium led by Eiffage, in partnership with Schneider Electric and Krinner. "We preferred to take a technology that is both robust and simple, with panels that must last about fifty years," said Xavier Barbaro, CEO of Neoen, the main shareholder of the project.
"It's going to be the densest solar power station in Europe and the most competitive. It will produce four to five times more electricity per hectare than the most recent plants, "he adds. The Constantin power station, with a capacity of 300 MW, will produce 350 GWh of electricity, the equivalent of the annual consumption of a city like Bordeaux.
Total amount of investments: 360 million. Electricity generated by the solar power plant will be sold to EDF for 102 euros / MWh, a subsidized rate by the state but the most competitive ever reached for solar in France. In comparison, the feed-in tariff for onshore wind is 82 euros / MWh. A price that Xavier Barbaro hopes to reach in two years.
... in the light of the energy transition
The Cestas project is the second largest French energy project, behind the Flamanville EPR. It is also the only project of this size that is set up in the solar energy sector in France.
In recent years, the government has favored smaller solar power plants. The goal? In particular, avoid land use conflicts with agriculture. Thus, the last major plant commissioned, that of Toul-Rosières in Meurthe-et-Moselle (115 MW), was inaugurated by EDF in 2012 ...
Mr Barbaro also deplores the administrative complexity faced by the photovoltaic industry, particularly for these large-scale projects: "The shock of simplification has not come to us. Because for quite obscure reasons, we can not build in France plants of more than 12 MW, which forced us for this project to mount 25 different companies ".
However, the Aquitaine region will be pleased to be the best endowed in France in terms of installed solar capacities, with 770 MW distributed on 80 parks. "We are not against nuclear energy," says Neoen's CEO, "but this project shows that photovoltaics has its place in the energy mix and is no longer anecdotal as it could be there are still some years. We are not in a fashion. Photovoltaic sets in alongside nuclear power and hydraulics ".
http://lenergeek.com/2015/05/25/cestas- ... uropeenne/