First Solar reaches 5 GW of solar assets under O&M contracts

Share

First Solar was one of the first solar PV manufacturers to move downstream into project development and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), a move which has been followed by most leading PV makers. And from development and construction, the company moved into operation and maintenance (O&M) of the plants that it built.

In 2009, First Solar began operating and maintaining a 21 MW solar plant in Blythe, California, which at the time was the largest PV project in the world. With this move, the company completed its downstream vertical integration.

Today First Solar marked a milestone in its O&M business, reaching over 5 GW of solar plants which it is operating and maintaining in 10 nations. The company cites GTM Research in stating that this makes First Solar Energy Services the world’s largest O&M provider, surpassing the next-largest provider by around 1.8 GW.

Assets under contract include the 550 MW Desert Sunlight and Topaz projects in California, which are among the largest solar projects in the world. And while the large majority of the projects which First Solar operates and maintains are in North America, the company is also operating plants in nations as diverse as Australia, Chile, France, Honduras and Japan.

The list also includes the 13 MW DEWA 1 PV plant in the desert near Dubai, and the 52 MW Shams Ma’an project in Jordan. Maintenance of solar projects in desert environments poses additional issues, and pv magazine looked at the DEWA 1 project for an article in our January print edition on O&M challenges in desert environments.

First Solar does not yet have any O&M contracts in China, the world’s largest solar market. China has been difficult for foreign companies to operate in, and when Western solar companies have worked in China, it is typically through joint ventures with Chinese companies.

First Solar’s monitoring of the assets which it has under contract is likewise global. First Solar Energy Services has two operations centers, with its first in Tempe, Arizona joined by a second in Sydney, Australia. Additionally, the company established a new operations center in Berlin in 2015. The Berlin center is operated by subsidiary Skytron Energy, which First Solar acquired in 2014.

Skytron operates as a separate business unit, but also monitors more than 6 GW of PV projects.

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.

Popular content

Share

Related content

Elsewhere on pv magazine...

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

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.