40 MW solar power station under construction

Containing 550,000 thin film PV modules

The approval for the Waldpolenz solar park was granted in February and construction work has already begun. Waldpolenz is a project of the juwi group, based in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The new solar plant will be located on a former military air base near the communities of Brandis and Bennewitz, east of Leipzig (Saxony, former eastern Germany). Construction will be completed by the end of 2009.

The plant will have a capacity of 40 MW. This is to be compared with the largest PV plant currently in operation, which is the 11 MW solar plant of Serpa, Portugal, inaugurated this month.

The Waldpolenz plant will be 2000 meter long and 600 meter wide, covering half of the former air base. It will consist of 550,000 thin film photovoltaic modules. The modules will be manufactured by First Solar, the world’s leading thin-film specialist, with a major construction plant based in the German town of Frankfurt on Oder. Although crystalline silicon technology still makes up the large majority of the PV market, thin-film technology has since long reached maturity and is currently on the rise due to its lower cost and scarcity of crystalline silicon material.