Acciona Energía has completed installation of solar panels at the 404.57MW Puerto Libertad plant located in the Sonora desert in Mexico.
Image: Acciona completes assembling PV panels at 404MW solar plant in Mexico. Photo: Courtesy of Acciona.
For this plant, Acciona has installed 1,072,909 photovoltaic panels, which generate nearly 356.02MW, in two months between October and December last year. And recently, it has assembled 43,080 modules with an associated generating capacity of 14.29MW.
The solar plant occupies a total area equivalent to 333 soccer pitches or 2.4 km2. It features a total of 1,222,800 PV panels installed on 1,496 horizontal tracking structures.
The Puerto Libertad plant will be located near the coast of the Gulf of California in Lower California around 200km northwest of Hermosillo, the capital of the State of Sonora.
Acciona is building the Puerto Libertad solar plant as a turnkey project. The contract is being executed for a joint venture owned by the company with 50% stake and Tuto Energy (Biofields Group) holding the remaining 50% stake.
The total planned capital expenditure for this plant is $349m and this solar plant is expected to begin operations in the first quarter of this year.
The construction phase of this plant has created nearly 600 jobs and during peak activity, more than 1300 people were employed. When the plant begins its operations, it will create nearly 38 permanent jobs.
This plant will generate nearly 963GWh of clean electricity per year, which will enough to be supplied to 583,000 Mexican households, while avoiding nearly 925,443 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, had the electricity been generated from coal-fired power stations.
Acciona Energía México CEO Miguel Angel Alonso said: “To date we had never reached such a pace of activity in the construction of a photovoltaic plant.
“In ‘Puerto Libertad’ we have achieved very efficient working practices born of our experience in previous projects and this has enabled us to complete the assembly of the plant in record time and also contribute to a major increase in our installed capacity in Mexico.”
Recently, the company joined Schneider Electric’s New Energy Opportunities (NEO) Network, a growing community of organizations committed to buying and developing renewable energy and clean technologies around the world.