Our philosophy will always be to go green, which means generating renewable energy for our needs. We wish to use photovoltaic modules (solar panels) to generate the necessary power output.
Despite the difficulty of calculating the total power needs for the ESS due to all of the disparate facilities that make up the whole, we have come up with a thumbnail estimate anyway of around 80 MW capacity with an output of around 6 GWh per month or 72 GWh per year.
This power requirement would entail the installation of over 300,000 photovoltaic modules along with a sufficient number of batteries for night operations. These modules will take up more than 400 acres of land.
The Jannersdorf Solar Park in Germany represents half of our needed requirements. Image 1 provides a visualization of the enormous amount of land the park occupies.
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| Image 1: The Jannersdorf Solar Park |
From Wikipedia:
"The Jännersdorf Solar Park is a photovoltaic power station in Prignitz, Germany. It has a capacity of 40.5 megawatts (MW) and an annual output of 38 GWh. ... The project is built on a former military training area on 90 hectares (220 acres). The project is equipped with 167,550 photovoltaic modules."
We would eventually need two of these solar parks.
An estimated one-third of the total capacity would be needed for Phase I operations. This equates to around 100,000 photovoltaic modules generating about 27 MW and an output of 24 GWh annually.
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