3 ms·
Again, the claim on the website is "has the potential to power over 91,000 homes". "up to", "has the potential", etc. But let's do some quick back of the envelo
by delroth 4y ago
Again, the claim on the website is "has the potential to power over 91,000 homes". "up to", "has the potential", etc. But let's do some quick back of the envelope maths.
91,000 homes would be about 91,000 * 3,000 kWh / year = 273 TWh / year. You need an average of 31 MW over a year to produce this, which roughly tracks 350 MW with ~10% capacity factor. So over a year this seems to be correct.
On a day to day basis however the project only includes 700 MWh of storage. That's about 24h of the electricity consumption of 91,000 homes. A single cloudy winter day and those batteries are empty. So if you look at shorter time periods than a full year there's a huge variation in how many households can actually be reliably powered by such an installation. It's likely somewhere between 1,000 (several days of cloudy winter) and 350,000 homes (sunny summer).
- tchaffee 4y agoThanks - that's the best explanation I've seen so far. > It's likely somewhere between 1,000 (several days of cloudy winter) How do you figure? Solar technology is moving so rapidly you can't even look at the efficiency of the panels from a few years ago to do the math. Is the 1,000 number a guess or did you do the math for the 900,000 some panels they will have at that site?