Half of the solar park’s 87,000 photovoltaic (PV) panels will be of the thin-film variety supplied by US-based First Solar, while the other half will be crystalline panels manufactured by China’s Suntech.
The park is the Middle East's first grid-connected PV generation plant, and will supply Masdar City with 17,500 megawatt-hours each year.
Incorporating a mixture of thin-film and crystalline cells is becoming increasingly common in large-scale solar parks, according to Sander Trestain, vice president of technical operations for Enviromena, the Abu Dhabi-based contractor in charge of installing and maintaining the PV panels.
“Different
