Germany will be home to the largest unsubsidised photovoltaic (PV) power plant in Europe, situated in Witznitz in a former open-cast lignite mine. The 650 MW DC facility, with an investment volume in the mid to high hundreds of millions of euros, is currently under construction by MOVE ON Energy and covers an area equivalent to 850 football pitches. It is the perfect site to demonstrate the capabilities of an advanced monitoring, control, and analytics system.
The PV plant is located near the coal-fired power plant Lippendorf and will be the first photovoltaic park in Germany to be connected to a 380 kV network. The plant will feature two 380 kV transformers to facilitate the efficient transmission of electricity. Power is generated by 1.1 million bifacial PV modules in East-West orientation.
When building the substation for the PV utility-scale plant, several challenges had to be overcome. The construction site was located on the spoil heap of the Witznitz brown coal open-pit mine, where the soil had limited load-bearing capacity, particularly in the loose upper soil layers.
