Orlando Utilities(OUC), the community owned utility serving parts of central Florida has brought it’s new solar farm online
The stats on the farm include:
-Covers 42 acres
-Power of 5.91MW(megawatts=1million watts-your residential electricity bill is in kilowatts=1000 watts) which is enough power to help 600 homes with their electric requirements
-There are 25,000 panels which appeared to be largely made by Yingli the Chinese manufacturer when we passed by the farm during the install phase
-The panels feature single axis tracking and can be hurricane proofed with advance notice of a hurricane
Duke Power will operate the farm and sell the power to OUC
Here’s a pic of the farm in eastern Orange County Fla along with local leaders announcing the opening
We are happy that the local utility is diving into renewables in a strong way
We find it sad that in light of the rough time that the USA solar manufacturers such as Evergreen and Solyndra had in 2011 that this community owned utility would choose Chinese made panels.
Goes to show how big business speaks out of both sides of it’s mouth. Duke Energy and OUC may pine about the loss of American jobs but they purchase the panels for their signature project from the Chinese we guess solely because they were cheaper.
We also find it sad that the output is still not close to where it needs to be to provide large scale renewable power to the citizens of central Florida. Unless our math is wrong 600 homes powered on 42 acres is about 15 homes powered per acre. Vast amounts of land would be needed to power the majority of the perhaps 300,000 people OUC helps everyday.
A much larger solar farm is planned for Lake County Fla that will be used by FPL another larger Fla utility
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