Editorial: Solar Photovoltaic Power Plants

In 2014, the global primary energy consumption was 12,928.4 million tons of oil equivalent which generates about 10,000 million tons of carbon during the burning of fossil fuels. The global energy crisis and environmental degradation problems have led to the rapid development of solar photovoltaic (PV) power plants to replace conventional power plants. Solar PV power plants of more than 10 MW in capacity have thereby become a reality. Future solar PV power plants will have higher power capacity. Indeed, some of them will exceed 1000 MW. Up to 2014, about 1600 installations worldwide were PV power plants larger than 4 MW. A 10 MW solar PV power plant may save about 15,000 tons of CO2 emissions per annum. More than 90% of the installed capacity consists of grid-connected systems. Since multimegawatt PV power plants require large areas of land, they are usually installed in remote areas, far from cities. For power transmission, a medium voltage network is commonly used.