Erthos, the creator of Earth Mount Solar PV, a solar mounting solution that secures panels flat to the ground, signed an agreement with Industrial Sun for a utility-scale solar project in Texas. Although the exact size of the plant has not yet been disclosed, Erthos has revealed that the project exceeds 100 MWDC.
Credit: Erthos
Industrial Sun, a renewable energy and storage developer based in Austin, has collectively delivered more than 6,000 MWAC of power projects throughout the United States, with a concentration in the ERCOT market.
The Erthos project has an expected interconnect capacity of 100 MWAC, and Industrial Sun will be the sole off-taker. A project of this size using traditional solar racking would typically require between five and six acres of land per megawatt, Erthos stated in a press release, however, with Earth Mount Solar PV, it takes fewer than 2.5 acres per megawatt.
“Erthos technology allows us to maximize our project capacity, particularly in those areas where our projects are land-constrained. Erthos is a very welcome solution for our business, and for any developer needing to up-size the capacity of their projects,” said Wade Gungoll, managing director of Industrial Sun.
The agreement with Industrial Sun is Erthos’ largest contract to date.
“There’s no question that our business is continuing to accelerate,” said Charles Pimentel, CCO of Erthos. “That’s in large part because of our ability to deliver improved energy density, higher wind ratings, and short build times — and to do so at a lower cost.”
News item from Erthos
” A project of this size using traditional solar racking would typically require between five and six acres of land per megawatt, Erthos stated in a press release, however, with Earth Mount Solar PV, it takes fewer than 2.5 acres per megawatt.”
Basically this type of mounting will be somewhat constricted in solar harvest. Even in the South, Southwest these installations are going to get from 6 sun hours to 4 sun hours of solid generation a day on average. You have much more energy density per acre and it’s not clear just how one troubleshoots the panel strings in a dense on ground installation of this size. Things like cleaning, and replacing a panel in an on ground array about a half an acre in the middle of the array could certainly create a problem. Since it is relatively new, it is yet to be seen how well things like thunder storms with potential hail and being in Texas how a random ICE Storm would affect an on ground panel array. Within many industries there is the concept of “best practices”, there is a reason to put solar PV panels up off of the ground and angle them properly for the lattidude to allow more average sunlight capture throughout the year and allow cooling of the panels to help in energy harvest efficiency.