China has just completed the world's largest floating solar plant, you might say that it is strange cause China has been know as the largest polluter in the world. Maybe they are cleaning up for their own actions.
The plant built by Chinese photovoltaic manufacturer Sungrow floats in water two to ten meters deep.
This plant was build in an old mining site which has been filled with rainwater. The water is mostly useless.
To build such a plant no land needs to be cleared! The water there provides cooling.
The plant is 40 megawatts of power output, in comparison the Australian is 330 MW of power land based solar power plant and a 650 megawatt plant is being build in India If you want to look at the world's biggest powerplant it all leads back to China.
They have an 1,500 Mw solar power plant. A single megawatt can power approximately 400 homes.
The energy efficiency of solar power plants seems to be at half of the largest nuclear power plants. If you check out the years that the solar plants are commissioned, it's all been happening the last two three years. It is all very new technology. It is at its worst efficiency and at the most primitive stages. Solar power plants are only going to get better from here on!
One of the problems is energy storage. How do you store the received energy from the Sun to use at night?
There is a couple of options,battery packs like Tesla's power packs.
They are used to power California and on a couple of Islands in Hawaii. For photovoltaic power plants this is a decent solution. But for Power plants that use solar thermal energy directly storing excess energy in molten salt is also a solution.
The problems with solar energy are when its night or cloudy you're hardly gonna get any power from the sun. For this reason solar power plants are probably going to be complementary technology to take the strain of the main power grid until energy storage solutions get perfected.
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Source: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/solar-panel-makers-grappling-with-waste-2013-2?r=US&IR=T
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think
https://www.techly.com.au/2017/05/31/china-worlds-largest-floating-solar-farm/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/11/141111-solar-panel-manufacturing-sustainability-ranking/