Plenty of people are waxing lyrical about the world's largest solar power plant just constructed in Germany by Solon and using Sunpower cells.

Actually, there are quite a few companies who have made a claim to the world's largest solar power plant . . .

This one in Portugal, when completed in January 2007, although a notionally lower capacity of 11 MW, will almost certainly have a higher load factor and produce more kilowatt hours in the Portuguese winter than in Bavaria.

Then there's Stirling Energy Systems plans for a MASSIVE 500 MW plant in California - announced with great fanfare last year, but we have heard little since.

Israel also has plans in place to build a 100 Mw plant in the desert - to be finished by 2012.

Solar power has until now proven very difficult to scale up to megawatt capacity. Most often the countries that could afford it, couldn't really spare usefully the large land requirements. It is only now that some of these barriers are starting to fall . . . expect plenty more world's largest solar plants in the next few years.