The Hatch Solar Energy Center is a 5.88
MWp (5.0
MWAC)
photovoltaic power station
A photovoltaic power station, also known as a solar park, solar farm, or solar power plant, is a large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic power system (PV system) designed for the supply of merchant power. They are different from most building ...
.
It was built by Blattner Energy using 84 dual-axis trackers and Amonix 7700
concentrator photovoltaics
Concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) (also known as concentrating photovoltaics or concentration photovoltaics) is a photovoltaic technology that generates electricity from sunlight. Unlike conventional photovoltaic systems, it uses lenses or cur ...
(CPV) panels, each of which contains 7,560
Fresnel lens
A Fresnel lens ( ; ; or ) is a type of composite compact lens (optics), lens which reduces the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections.
The simpler Dioptrics, d ...
es to concentrate sunlight 500 times onto
multijunction photovoltaic cell
Multi-junction (MJ) solar cells are solar cells with multiple p–n junctions made of different semiconductor materials. Each material's p–n junction will produce electric current in response to different wavelengths of light. The use of mult ...
s. It was the largest CPV facility in North America when it was completed in 2011.
The facility was subsequently repowered with
SunPower
SunPower Corporation is an American provider of photovoltaic solar energy generation systems and battery energy storage products, primarily for residential customers. The company, headquartered in San Jose, California, was founded in 1985 b ...
panels that use high-efficiency
monocrystalline silicon
Monocrystalline silicon, often referred to as single-crystal silicon or simply mono-Si, is a critical material widely used in modern electronics and photovoltaics. As the foundation for silicon-based discrete components and integrated circuits, ...
cells without concentration.
The output is being sold to El Paso Electric, under a 25-year
power purchase agreement (PPA).
Annual electricity production is expected to be about 11,000 MW·h/year.
Hatch Solar Energy Center
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Electricity production
See also
* Alamosa Solar Generating Project
* List of photovoltaic power stations
The following is a list of photovoltaic power stations that are larger than 500 megawatts (MW) in current net capacity.Note that nominal power may be AC or DC, depending on the plant, and therefore any totals quoted are hybrid. SeAC-DC conundru ...
* Renewable energy in the United States
A renewable resource (also known as a flow resource) is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a finite amount of t ...
* Solar power in New Mexico
Solar power in New Mexico in 2016 generated 2.8% of the state's total electricity consumption, despite a National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) projection suggesting a potential contribution three orders of magnitude larger.
Renewable Portf ...
* Solar power in the United States
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2024, utility-scale solar power generated 218.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in the United States. Total ...
External links
Photo gallery
References
{{Solar power in the United States
Energy infrastructure completed in 2011
Solar power stations in New Mexico
Photovoltaic power stations in the United States
NextEra Energy