This will certainly help reduce carbon emissions. I wonder though if all that black will not inadvertently increase the heat in the area.

How are those panels cleaned when they get dust on them?

They sure have the land and most importantly the sun to support a project of that size.

Sounds pretty competitive cost-wise with nuclear powerplants without the much higher risks.

More solar? Cool. Way to go, Abu Dhabi.
I wonder what the lifetime of a sandblasted solar panel is. And will they walk past the rows carrying compressed air jets or vacuums to remove dust once or twice a week? It would be interesting to find out what controllers and inverters they use for systems that size, too, just for kicks.

I live about an hour from the South Texas Nuclear Plant that went online 30 years ago. It has two units, each produces about 1.2 gigawatts, same as the Abu Dhabi solar field does when the sun is shining bright. Solar panels produce full power for about 8 hours a day. So, on any given day, the STP nuclear plant produces about 6 times the energy as the world's biggest solar plant. And delivers that electricity all night long with zero carbon emmissions.

Too bad. They just missed the 1.21 gigawatts it takes to power a DeLorean.

So what's wrong with solar freakin roadways? Do they not work, or what?

I agree @Ichabod Ebenezer why stop at "1.177 gigawatts" when they are SO close to 1.21. Maybe the next slightly larger install will capitalize on the opportunity. @Grunchy Solar freakin roadways were always a really bad idea. They took in tons of money and fell on their face for many of the reasons people predicted and a few new ones they didn't. thunderf00t on youtube spent a great deal of time debunking the idea and following the project if it's something you are curious about he has about 20 videos documenting how badly it failed and why. In short it makes way more sense to cover roads and parking lots with a solar roof than it does to try to drive on top of solar panels as a road surface.

I'd be curious to know whether that much area is better used by photovoltaic cells or with the kind of thermal "solar power tower" I've seen stories about recently in the US. Certainly, as solar cell efficiency improves, advantages will shift, but I seem to recall some pretty high power densities from thermal power stations, to this date.