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The San Luis Valley Solar Ranch is a 30 
megawatt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...
( 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 ...
in the
San Luis Valley The San Luis Valley is a region in south-central Colorado with a small portion overlapping into New Mexico. The valley is approximately long and wide, making it the largest alpine valley in the world. It extends from the Continental Divide on ...
, located near the town of
Mosca, Colorado Mosca (Spanish for fly) is an unincorporated community and a U.S. Post Office in Alamosa County, Colorado, United States. Mosca's population is 1,072 as of the 2020 census. It was named for the nearby Mosca Pass, which was named for the Spani ...
. It was the largest solar facility in the state when it came online at the end of 2011. The electricity is being sold to Public Service of Colorado, a subsidiary of
Xcel Energy Xcel Energy Inc. is a U.S. regulated electric utility and natural gas delivery company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, serving more than 3.7 million electric customers and 2.1 million natural gas customers across parts of eight states (Color ...
, under a 20-year power purchase agreement.


Facility details

The facility occupies about 220 acres of a 320-acre plot of previous agricultural farmland, and is the third utility-scale solar project to be completed in the sunny and cool San Luis Valley. It was developed and financed, and continues to be owned and operated, by the Spanish renewable energy company
Iberdrola Iberdrola, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational electric utility company based in Bilbao, Spain. It has around 40,000 employees and serves around 30 million customers. Subsidiary, Subsidiaries include ScottishPower (United Kingdom), Ava ...
(now
Avangrid Avangrid, Inc. (formerly Energy East and Iberdrola USA), is an energy services and delivery company. Avangrid serves about 3.1 million customers throughout New England, Pennsylvania and New York in the United States. History In 2008 Iberdrola S.A ...
in the US) which previously completed two wind energy projects in the state. The plant consists of about 110,000
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 ...
E19-series panels (each rated about 320  Wp and 19% efficiency) that are mounted on single-axis trackers. Iberdrola contracted with SunPower to provide the technology and construct the facility. Work at the project site began in November 2010, and included a new 150 kV transmission line to the San Luis Valley Rural Electrical Cooperative's substation. About 200 workers were employed during the construction phase. First electricity was delivered to the grid in December 2011, and the start of commercial operations was commissioned in March 2012.


Electricity production


See also

* Hooper Solar PV Power Plant *
Solar power in Colorado Solar power in Colorado has grown rapidly, partly because of one of the most favorable net metering laws in the country, with no limit on the number of users. The state was the first in the nation to establish a Renewable Portfolio Standard for i ...
*
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 ...
*
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 ...
*
Renewable portfolio standard A renewable portfolio standard (RPS) is a regulation that requires the increased production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal. Other common names for the same concept include Renewable Electric ...


External links


VIDEO: San Luis Solar Ranch - Operations and Maintenance Interview

San Luis Valley Solar Ranch Fact Sheet - Archived


References

{{Solar power in the United States Buildings and structures in Alamosa County, Colorado Photovoltaic power stations in Colorado Photovoltaic power stations in the United States Energy infrastructure completed in 2011