Europe’s largest solar park supplies around 2 million people with renewable energy. But the solar park is not even located in Europe.
Photovoltaic systems are a way to supply many people with energy without placing a particularly heavy burden on the environment.
Europe’s largest plant went online in 2023 and can supply around 2 million people with electricity. If you look at the map, the plant is not even in Europe.
Kalyon Karapinar is considered the largest solar park in Europe
Where is the power plant? Not really in Europe. Despite claims that it is the largest solar power plant in Europe, it is located in the Karapinar Desert in the Asian Anatolia region of Turkey.
The company behind the power plant, Kalyon Energy, is based in Istanbul and considers it a European plant, which is why it is often referred to as the largest and most powerful photovoltaic power plant in Europe. However, the plant is not even located on European soil. The manufacturer itself writes on its own website:
Kalyon Karapınar SPP is the largest solar power plant in Turkey and Europe and one of the largest in the world.
What can the system do? Kalyon Karapinar has a peak output of 1,350 MW and generates two and a half million megawatt hours of energy per year. That is enough to supply about 2 million residents with electricity. At the same time, according to the manufacturer, it avoids “about 1.7 million tons of carbon emissions annually.”
Construction of the Kalyon Karapinar solar park began in 2020 and took almost four years to build. The plant will finally go online in 2023.
In 2023, half of Kalyon Karapinar was sold to the Emirati fund Abu Dhabi International Holding for $490 million.
Where is the largest facility in Germany? The largest contiguous solar park in Germany is in Witznitz near Leipzig (Saxony). The plant was officially completed in April 2024. The plant covers 500 hectares of the former open-cast lignite mine “Witznitz II” and is expected to produce 600 megawatts of electricity. This is reported by pv-magazine.de.
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