This week’s post is the second installment of our utility-scale solar blog series featuring Matt Campbell, Director of Utility Products and Market Development at SunPower.

In this installment, Campbell discusses the advantages of the Oasis Power Plant solution for utilities, solar power plant developers and investors. He describes how Oasis streamlines the utility-scale power plant construction and development process by providing pre-engineered modules for quicker installation.

According to Campbell, “The first [way that Oasis streamlines the construction process] is, by having a pre-engineered block. What that means is, when you have a new piece of land, it becomes a very simple matter to overlay the pre-engineered power blocks over the terrain… So again, a standard kit of designs that enable a very fast preliminary design development process.”

He goes on to discuss the benefits of pre-qualification by investors, and highlights how SunPower’s Oasis technology enhances energy production at its peak:

“The Oasis system has been designed from the bottom up to optimize production when the utility is used the most, which is at peak demand. Now if you look at a place like California, the peak demand for energy is the summer in the afternoon, when on a hot day, most people have their air conditioning systems running, which creates an enormous strain on the grid and on their power plants. So what Oasis does is by using an optimized tracking system design, it’s producing up to forty percent more power during that summer afternoon peak period, which in the southwest of the United States is the peak of demand.”

Stay tuned - in two weeks, Matt Campbell will discuss Levelized Cost of Energy, or LCOE, a way to compare the cost of generation over the life of the system for differing generation technologies.

Check out the video below to learn more about SunPower Oasis advantages, and please join the discussion on our Facebook community at www.facebook.com/sunpower or follow us on Twitter (@SunPower) for the latest solar PV technology updates.

When SunPower announced the SunPower Oasis Power Plant in May 2010, we made a commitment to develop the industry’s most cost-optimized and scalable solar power plant solution. Now, as we’ve begun our first deployment of a U.S. Oasis power plant in Arizona and have recently contracted with Southern California Edison to deliver 711 MW of power by 2016 (enough to power nearly half a million California homes), we want to share additional details about Oasis and how it simplifies PV power plant development.

In the following two-part video blog series, Matt Campbell, Director of Utility Products and Market Development at SunPower, shares a general overview behind the concept of the Oasis Power Plant, detailing the benefits and advantages for utilities, developers and investors, and discussing how SunPower technology can streamline the deployment process for a solar power plant from the ground to the grid.

In this first segment, Campbell outlines the reasoning behind Oasis plants, claiming:

“The core focus of Oasis is scalability. So when we conceived of this program, and we looked at the future of photovoltaic power plants, what we saw is that the current approach to building PV power plants wasn’t scalable in the size and scale of the market.”

Campbell goes on to say, "Every power plant is different. And we really wanted to get to the next level of cost reduction, long-term operation and maintenance, and overall speed and construction. We believe that you need a modular approach to the problem. And that’s what Oasis provides.”

Next week, Campbell will explain the advantages of the Oasis Power Plant solution for utilities, solar power plant developers and investors. If you have questions or would like more information, please join the discussion in our community on Facebook (www.facebook.com/sunpower) and follow us on Twitter (@SunPower) for the latest solar PV technology updates.