Vietnam builds solar farm in 3 months

 From PV Magazine

Vietnamese construction company Trungnam Group has announced the inauguration of what is thought to be the nation's biggest solar project – the 450 MW Trung Nam Thuan Nam Solar Plant, in the southeastern province of Ninh Thuan.

The company on Monday announced completion of the project, including associated electricity grid improvements, and said the solar plant had been completed within 102 days of finance being agreed in April.

Trungnam stated the solar project, in the Phuoc Minh commune of Ninh Thuan's Thuan Nam district, would generate 1.2 GWh of solar electricity in its first year of operation and “more than” 1 GWh annually thereafter.

The company said some 8,000 laborers and engineers carried out land clearance of the site in just 45 days and said it had joined with public bodies the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, the Thuan Nam communal people's committee, and the provincial association of poor patients to donate 102 houses worth a total VND5.1 billion ($220,000) to poor households during the build phase.

Noting that the government wanted Ninh Thuan province to become a “national renewable energy center,” Trungnam said the 500 kV transformer station and 220/500 kV power line installed as part of the project would enhance the grid in the province and the wider south central coast region.

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The advocates of nuclear power as a solution to climate change face three problems:

1. Full-sized 1000 MW power stations seem to take a decade or more to build.  We don't have the time to wait for a roll-out of nuclear power when we can build a solar farm in 3 months.  
2. Nuclear power costs five times as much as solar.  Even adding the cost of "firming" with batteries or pumped hydro,  solar is still cheaper than nuclear.  SMRs might be cheaper.
3. There remains the issue of nuclear waste and the fact that accidents, though rare, are prodigiously expensive.