Design, installation and performance of the ARCO Solar one-megawatt power plant

On December 15, 1982 ARCO Solar, Inc. began full daily operation of a 1 MW DC photovoltaic power generation plant on Southern California Edison (SCE) property adjacent to the utility's Lugo substation at Hesperia, California. This paper describes the design, installation and performance of the plant to date. A total of 108 computer controlled two-axis trackers, each with a complement of 256 single crystal silicon solar cell modules were installed in the 8 hectare array field. Each tracker produces (at standard conditions) approximately 9600 watts of DC power which is converted by parallel operated DC-AC inverters to 480V, 3 phase 60 Hz and injected into the SCE distribution grid after step-up to 12 KV. A computer based on-site data acquisition system has collected substantial data on system performance. Experience gained from early construction and operation of this commercial photovoltaic power plant is providing data which is accelerating the deployment of other megawatt-scale photovoltaic power plants.