Webberville Solar Project

Project Overview

The Webberville solar project is a 35-megawatt direct current (DC) photovoltaic system located on a 380-acre site owned by the City of Austin. FRV AE Solar, LLC leases the property and utilize approximately 280 acres for the solar facility. The site is located one mile from Austin Energy's Austrop substation, which minimizes the additional transmission infrastructure required to deliver power generated to the electricity grid. This solar facility utilizes solar Photovoltaic panel technology that is mounted on horizontal-axis trackers that rotates in the East-West direction with the sun's position in the sky in order to optimize electricity production. FRV AE Solar, LLC will generate emission-free solar power that will be sold to Austin Energy (AE) under a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) and contribute to AE's fulfillment of its 30% renewable energy goal. The system will produce over 50,000 MWh of solar power annually, enough energy to power 5,000 homes.

Photovoltaic (PV) modules convert sunlight directly to DC electricity. Large numbers of modules are connected together in series and parallel to form an array. Arrays are mounted on sun-tracking structures that provide mechanical support along with convenient mechanical and electrical grouping geometries. DC power is usually aggregated via combiner boxes at regular intervals in the array field, with corresponding increases in wire size to carry the larger amounts of current toward the inverter. The inverter converts the DC (direct current) electricity from the Photovoltaic array into AC (Alternating current) power for delivery to the electricity grid, with multiple inverters used in parallel for typical MW-scale utility scale project. There are transformers at the output of the inverter that step the voltage up to the utility level.