Spain overtakes US with world's biggest solar power station

Spain has just overtaken the US in the bid to create the world’s biggest solar power station after opening a new plant in the west of the country.

The new La Florida plant means that Spain’s solar power production is now equivalent to that of a nuclear power station, taking the country’s solar output to 432MW, compared with 422MW in the US.

Protermosolar, the association that represents the solar energy sector in Spain, predicts that within a year another 600MW will have come on stream and anticipates that by 2013 solar capacity will have reached 2,500MW.

The plant, at Alvarado, Badajoz, in the west of the country, is a parabolic trough, whereby sunlight is reflected off a parabolic mirror, which rotates during the day to follow the sun's movement, onto a fluid-filled tube. The heated liquid is used to generate steam to run the turbines. The solar farm covers 550,000 square metres, equivalent to about 77 football pitches, and produces 50MW of power.

Last year, solar energy met 2.8 per cent of demand out a total of 12.9 per cent for all renewables. In March, the Spanish government announced plans to increase the renewable share to 22.7 per cent by 2020, slightly ahead of EU targets.

Spain is already a world leader in renewable energies and has long been a producer of hydro-electricity – only China and the US have built more dams. It also has a highly developed wind power sector which, like solar power, has received generous government subsidies.

The northern, thinly populated region of Navarra already produces three quarters of its energy from renewable energy sources including wind, solar, hydro and biomass. Spain's wind farms now produce about 20,000MW of electricity and on one particularly windy day in November last year they supplied 53 per cent of Spain’s electricity – equivalent to the power output of 11 nuclear plants.

Solar power is an obvious energy choice for a country that has an average of 340 days of sunshine a year, making it more reliable than wind. Spain is now the fourth largest manufacturer of solar power technology in the world.