Hatch, New Mexico lays claim to being the home of the world's best chile pepper. That's enough reason to visit. But the town is now also home to the largest Concentrating Photovoltaic (CPV) project in North America. (At least until the 30-megawatt Alamosa project comes online.)
We broke this story in August when the 5-megawatt CPV plant with hardware from Amonix came online.
A 5-megawatt project in the world of photovoltaics doesn't always warrant news coverage. But a 5-megawatt project in CPV is a big deal.
The Hatch CPV project employs Amonix CPV systems and sits on 39 acres in the Hatch Industrial Park, seven miles west of the Village of Hatch. The 5-megawatt system uses 84 Amonix trackers and is being built and operated by NextEra Energy Resources, a unit of NextEra Energy.
Each of the Amonix modules puts out about 60 kilowatts.
Blattner Energy of Albuquerque, NM is the EPC and construction contractor for the solar project. The project employed approximately 60 people during the construction phase. Electricity generated from the projects will be sold to El Paso Electric under a Purchase Power Agreement (PPA) to help meet New Mexico's Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard. The project was funded by Industrial Revenue Bonds.
Here are some photos of the site that show the scale of the project:
GTM Research has written the definitive analysis of the CPV market -- here's a link to the report. The CPV Ecosystem chart shown below is excerpted from that report.
