Located across 90 acres, the Ontario plant reportedly has a panel surface area of around 966,000 square metres, and is comprised of approximately 1.3 million thin film panels. The annual yield is expected to about 120,000 MWh, which should save over 39,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. Enbridge adds that the facility will generate enough power to meet the needs of about 12,800 homes.
The companies say that around 800 jobs were created at construction peak, as well as indirect benefits to dozens of businesses in the Sarnia area, including engineering and design firms, construction subcontractors, suppliers and service providers.
The power purchaser is Canada-based Ontario Power Authority. Enbridge has said it will sell the power output of the facility to the authority pursuant to 20-year Power Purchase Agreements under the terms of the Ontario government's Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program.
First Solar will operate and maintain the Sarnia Solar Project for Enbridge under a long-term contract. First Solar developed, engineered, and constructed the facility, using its thin film solar panels.
Completing the world's largest PV power plant demonstrates the migration of solar PV toward utility scale," said Frank De Rosa, First Solar's senior vice president of North American project development. "With this project, we expect to install 145 MW this year in North America."
The Honourable Brad Duguid, Ontario Minister of Energy added: "The Sarnia Solar Project is an example of the kinds of renewable energy projects that have been developed under the Government of Ontario's Green Energy Act. Ontario can now boast the largest solar farm in North America – it is projects like this one that are making us a leader in renewable energy and helping us all move towards a cleaner energy future."
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.