First Solar’s 250 MW Agua Caliente is the World’s Largest Solar Plant

The second quarter of 2012 was a record quarter for the utility solar market segment with 477 megawatts deployed out of the total 742 megawatts installed in the quarter, according to the most recent U.S. Solar Market Insight.

Leading the utility solar pack is the world's largest solar farm -- the Agua Caliente behemoth in Yuma County, Arizona.

First Solar (Nasdaq: FSLR), the developer and panel supplier at Agua Caliente, just announced that the project has hit a peak generating capacity of 250 megawatts AC and is online and connected to the electrical grid. The project will boast a generating capacity of 290 megawatts AC when done.

Construction started in the fall of 2010 and solar module installation began in June of 2011. Construction is still in progress, with completion expected in 2014. Agua Caliente is owned by NRG Energy (NYSE:NRG) and MidAmerican Solar. First Solar will build, operate and maintain the site. PG&E has a power purchase agreement in place for the electricity generated by the project. According to an earlier press release, the project’s construction phase is creating an average of 400 jobs, with over 80 percent of the workforce coming from Arizona.

The Agua Caliente plant will eventually deploy 400 units of SMA's Sunny Central inverters. The project will deploy fault ride-through and dynamic voltage regulation, technologies that are new to solar power plants in the United States.The project has received a $967 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The U.S. Solar Market Insight: 2nd Quarter 2012 forecasts the utility photovoltaic market to remain strong through the last two quarters of 2012.

And this project will hold the title of world's largest PV project until a few other behemoths go live.

Here's a table of operational PV power plants in the U.S. courtesy of GTM Research. One noticable aspect of this table is its dynamic nature -- in just a few months since we last charted this information, this table has seen a number of new entrants and a continuing growth in project size. Meet the analysts who put together these reports and data sets this week at Solar Power International in Orlando, Florida at booth #2762.

(Megawatt values are in DC and we assume an 87 percent DC-to-AC derate factor for projects that are quoted in AC. Data from GTM Research.)

From U.S. Solar Market Insight Q2 2012: