Scargill

Solar power in Lorca
When last heading back to the airport after a trip to Spain in April 2009, I took the opportunity to visit LORCA  – a rather large city part way between Galera and Murcia airport. One of the benefits of carrying a sat-nav is that you don’t have to worry about getting lost – so I took a diversion off the motorway and found myself in an industrial estate behind which appeared to be a rather large solar farm…. just how large wasn’t apparent until I found myself wandering along a dirt road that would be well placed in a desert somewhere.

The “farm” turned out to be the largest collection of solar arrays I’ve ever see and after ditching the car in favour of an on-foot reconnoitre I have to say…. MOST impressed – the Spanish really DO take solar power seriously – this is a VAST collection of massive photovoltiac solar panels though no-where near as impressive as this 20MW solar collector in Sevilla, however – if you look in the photo, the panels go almost as far as you can see. According to the blurb it chucks out 2,000,000 KWH annually or put another way about enough to run maybe 100 homes as long as they don’t all run the kettle at once. I’m sure anyone sufficiently interested can Google Lorca and get some more information – suffice it to say it’s well worth 5 minutes out of your journey to take a look. 

Apologies for the obvious photo glitch on the large panel – my camera could not cope with this scene so I had to panorama it from 4 photos.