January 3rd, 2015 by Zachary Shahan
Originally published on Sustainnovate.
The city of La Paz, Mexico, is soon going to be powered
100% by solar energy… really. It already has a 39 megawatt solar power
in place, Aura Solar I. And at the moment Grupotec is building another
solar power plant that will also include battery storage.
Construction on the new solar power plant, Grupotec I, began this month. It will
include 97,000 solar panels on 44 acres, with an investment of $80
million. It will have 30 megawatts of power capacity, and the battery
storage facility will have 11 megawatts.
Grupotec I has a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA)
with Mexican utility CFE. The price will vary based on local node
prices. This is the same sort of arrangement that Aura Solar I has — it
was the first in the world known to have such an arrangement.
La Paz has a population of about 215,000 people, and
Grupotec expects that the new solar power plant will produce about
40–42% of the city’s electricity demand.
Interestingly, the high cost of fossil fuels was a big part
of the impetus for this city’s solar revolution. It is on an isolated
grid (essentially an island), and was importing expensive fossil fuel
for its electric production. The cost of such fuel is also quite
volatile, bringing financial risk.
Congratulations to La Paz and whichever leaders pushed
these solutions forward. We’ll see more and more stories like this in
the years to come, but the early leaders certainly do deserve some
praise.
Image Credit: janhamlet (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
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