We often talk about smaller solar power systems on homes or commercial buildings but on this week’s Energy Show we are talking about gigawatt scale solar installations, and here is the logic --solar panels continue to get cheaper, panels are getting more efficient, and by the same token, for whatever reason, electricity from the utility companies keeps getting more and more expensive. So it’s no surprise that we are now seeing gigawatt scale solar installations to take advantage of these economies of scale and less expensive electricity.

When I started doing PV installations back in 2001, the biggest projects were about 5 MW. Just over the past couple years I’ve seen 500 MW installations go in here in the US and there is several 1,000 MW (a gigawatt) installations in India and China.

Now there is gigawatt plant construction underway in the US and to put these projects in perspective, it’s twice the capacity of most natural gas plants, it covers about ten square miles, have over three million solar panels, and employee thousands of people during construction.

So to talk about projects of this size, my special guests on this week’s Energy Show are Mark Cox and Shola Ashiru of New Energy Fund II, a private equity investment company.