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Name plate capaity is what they sell the project to investors on to make it sound good? Some kind of lab spec? for the panels and a sun chart? Solar Star has a stated name plate of 597 MW ac but it only managed to do 185 MW on it's best year in 2015 and was down to 165 last year. So it is running at 30% at best.The London offshore wind turbine array is doing well at over 40%. Topaz solar farm uses more reasonable tech and is nearby to Solar Star and is at 24%.
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Solar Star is beating the output per acre though at 2 acres / GWh/y.
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So to replace all current electrical for the US (4TWh/y) we need 2500 more Solar Stars. Plus storage. Plus some heavy wires to get all of that power from Arizona to Boston. Putting a Solar Star in Boston would show you how cloudy and rainy it is there. Upstate NY has Lake effect rain and snow from Lake Ontario and is one of the cloudiest places in the US.
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But it has world class wind in the near shore all along the east end of the lake. But no one talks about using this. Water area is cheap. No individual owns it. The State can discount the lease. If they are smart.
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Storage is the biggie. You can mix in wind with solar all you want and say they offset each other but it is still completely intermittent. Even on a minute by minute basis. Very noisy. Look at the graphs. If we really want to commit to wind and solar for more than a fraction of our electrical we will need some serious storage solutions and everyone will have to accept complete smart grid control of every specific outlet in their home. If they are wealthy enough to afford better than that they will have to add their own storage at home.
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Solar in a straw is actually much more practical since it can at least store 8 hours of heat power to follow down demand through the night.
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You can keep talking about Germany but just because the government forced the electric company to give everyone with a roof free solar panels and charge all of the consumers for it via higher rates, doesn't mean they actually do much of anything.
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