The workers building the 200-megawatt Rambler Solar Project in Tom Green County, Texas, had hit their stride when the pandemic struck. Pile drivers smoothly sunk I-beams into the ground. A team attached rotating racks that followed the course of the sun across the sky. Next, a crew bolted in solar panels, followed by a group of electricians that wired everything together. All that halted when some of the project’s 300 workers tested positive for COVID-19 in the spring of 2020.
But just a week later, the workers were back, and by August 2020 that project was generating enough electricity to power more than 32,000 homes. “There were a few more hurdles and things to dodge along the way, but the team did such a great job,” said Matt Johnson, general manager of engineering for Duke Energy Sustainable Solutions.
Despite the pandemic, the United States built more utility-scale solar power plants in 2020 than any other year, with Texas leading the way. All those new solar plants added up to 9.6 gigawatts of renewable energy added to the U.S. power grid, bringing the nation’s total solar capacity to 48 gigawatts. That’s enough to allow further retirements in the nati... Read more
