Super-Size Solar Farms Are Taking Over the World

As many of the world’s major governments and corporations move to transition the global power supply away from fossil fuels, developers are transforming swaths of empty desert, agricultural land, and rural lakefront into vast solar energy farms. The mega-sized projects represent a new class of renewable power capacity that’s finally approaching the scale of coal-, oil-, and natural gas-fired plants.

Large-scale solar projects are getting more common every year. In 2019, developers set a record by commissioning at least 35 projects of at least 200 megawatts worldwide, up about 17% from the year prior, according to an analysis of data compiled by BloombergNEF. With about 3,000 solar panels needed for each megawatt of capacity, a 200-megawatt project would be at least as big as 550 American football fields.

The increasing size of solar farms comes as costs fall. At the same time, there’s a growing group of buyers in the market for renewable assets, particularly pension funds and other institutional investors keen to match their long-dated liabilities with the consistent returns of solar farms.

Solar farms were tiny in the U.S. before the early part of the last decade. But as equipment got cheaper, competition increased for long-term power-supply contracts with utilities, driving down electricity prices. Prices for the panels themselves have fallen about 88% in the last decade and are expected to fall another 43% by 2030, according to BNEF. That has put a premium on scale.

The rise of the mega-solar parks hasn’t been universally celebrated. Homeowners have resisted living near green projects, worried about aesthetics and property values. It’s a conundrum for renewables: people want cleaner electricity, but they don’t want it next door.

Smaller projects can be challenging to build. The costs for transmission lines, substation design, security, land, and fences is comparable for large and small projects, says Tom Buttgenbach, president and chief executive officer of 8minute Solar Energy, a California-based developer of large solar farms. That means bigger projects can use scale to drive down the price developers are able charge for electricity.

Super-Size Solar Farms Are Taking Over the World