Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) plans to build a one megawatt (MW) concentrating photovoltaic solar facility on the tailing site of Chevron Mining, Inc’s molybdenum mine in Questa, New Mexico.
The project will be the largest concentrating solar photovoltaic installation in the U.S., and it wll employ CPV technology built by Germany’s Concentrix Solar, marking the company’s first commercial project in the US market.
The facility will include approximately 175 solar panels on about 20 acres of land, and the electricity produced will be sold to Kit Carson Electric Cooperative through a power purchase agreement. Construction is expected to be complete by year-end.
In July 2009, Concentrix Solar already installed a demo system on the University of California San Diego campus. The demonstration tracker confirmed system efficiencies (AC) of 25% under full field operating conditions.
Concentrix Solar operates a fully-automated manufacturing line in Freiburg, Germany, with a capacity of 25 MW.
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson made the announcement Tuesday.
“Locating renewable energy projects on impacted lands is a great way to redevelop the land,” Richardson said. (The US EPA and NREL are also exploring the possibility of deploying renewable power generation on brownfield and Superfund sites.)
The project will be implemented in conjunction with an evaluation of various soil depths for closure of the tailing facility at the end of mining operations.
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