The world’s biggest solar tower will open early this year in Spain. The race for leadership in the next generation of solar power is taking off.
The U.K. Guardian reports that in the desert 20 miles outside Seville, the Spanish company Abengoa will be deploying over 1,000 sun-tracking mirrors—each “about half the size of a tennis court”—to superheat water to 260°C to drive a steam turbine and generate 20MW of electricity.
Concentrated solar power (CSP) technology, as it is known, is seen by many as a simpler, cheaper and more efficient way to harness the sun’s energy than other methods such as photovoltaic (PV) panels.
Spain is placing a huge bet on CSP to meet their renewable energy and carbon targets:
Spanish firms are charging ahead with CSP: more than 50 solar projects around Spain have been approved for construction by the government and, by 2015, the country will generate more than 2GW of power from CSP, comfortably exceeding current national targets. The companies are also exporting their technology to Morocco, Algeria and the US ...
The country’s clean energy targets are in line with the EU’s plan to source 20% of primary energy from renewables by 2020, which means that 30% of electricity would have to come from carbon-free sources ...
CSP projects across Spain are built with the promise that the government will pay a premium, known as a feed-in tariff, for any CSP electricity sent into the grid. The PS20 is part of a €1.2bn series of solar power plants based on CSP technologies including tower plants and trough-style collectors—where water is passed in tubes directly in front of parabolic mirrors that collect sunlight—and a few PV panels planned by Abengoa. The solar farm will eventually generate up to 300MW of power, enough for the 700,000 people of Seville, by 2013.
The ultimate goal is to add thermal storage to CSP and create what I think is more accurately called solar thermal baseload:
The 20MW solar tower is also a forerunner for an even more ambitious idea, one that Abascal [Abengoa’s CTO] hopes will become a standard for CSP plants in future—a 50MW version that could generate electricity around the clock. “During the day, you’d use 50% of your electricity to produce electricity and 50% to heat molten salt. During the night you use the molten salt to produce electricity.”
Molten salt technology is in its early stages but Abengoa is testing the idea at a power plant in Granada. So far the company has demonstrated that it is possible to store up to eight hours of solar energy by heating tanks containing 28,000 tonnes of salt to more than 220C. “This will make it possible to have almost constant production or at least it will be able to produce energy for most of the day,” said Abascal.
Kudos to Spain for leading the way on this crucial climate solution.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
‘Heretic’ battles straw man
Comments
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Tasermons Partner Posted 1:28 pm
03 Jan 2009
If they need 20,000 tonnes of salt just to produce that much energy, it would take untold millions (billions?) of tonnes to apply that same technology on an even larger scale.
Just where would that salt come from? And would there be any downside to heatin' it up like that?
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In the belly Posted 3:45 am
04 Jan 2009
Salt Excavation in East Texas
Better to dewater the salt slurry effluent and use it for thermal storage than pump it into a saline aquifer, I think.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 10:21 am
04 Jan 2009
True.
...although I'd rather they not be usin' the salt domes as oil/gas storage facilities to begin with.
Though I guess they could take salt from bodies of water that were oversalted due to human activities...but you'd still have the transport issues to think 'bout.
And in reality, I doubt they'd go for it, since outright traditional mining of the salt would probably be the cheapest option.
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Bob Wallace Posted 11:36 am
04 Jan 2009
"Solar Two used molten salt, a combination of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate, as an energy storage medium." So says Wikipedia, anyway."
Extract it once. Use it forever. It's not like it gets used up.
As a point of reference the world uses about 200 million metric tons of table salt per year. That's use it and lose it and extract it again.
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stopgreenpath Posted 12:13 pm
04 Jan 2009
let's see the entire built environment maxed out with point of use generation, while research advances on storage and conservation solutions, and make decisions about killing off ecoystems at that stage - don't you wonder why that is the FIRST idea these mercenaries are jumping to? it's so they can bottle your sun and your wind on your land and sell it back to you for profit.
wake up! time to generate our own power and sell excess into the grid for decent tariffs. let's save our important intact wildlife habitats so they can keep doing what they do (the Mojave happens to be a fantastic carbon absorbing ecosystem when left intact, so who knows about Spain's deserts?).
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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Bob Wallace Posted 1:08 pm
04 Jan 2009
Calc out the cost/methods of generating the power we need by "doing it ourselves". Be sure to include late peak hour supplies.
Oh, and include ideas of how we force people to run their own utility companies when they have no desire and/or ability to do so.
(BTW, I call BS on the birds, bats, groundwater, acres killed part. We might lose a lot of moths in the area. But perhaps fewer than we kill via other methods. I'm not sure the desert is chock-a-block with moths.)
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Tasermons Partner Posted 10:47 am
05 Jan 2009
I agree that local on-site energy production is best.
However, there is an element here that should be noted.
Spain's deserts are not virgin.
And in fact they can hardly be qualified as deserts anymore. They've been irrigated and used for agriculture for many centuries now.
Much of the original ecosystem has been altered from it's original pre-agricultural state.
There's little to be lost from conversion of land which has already been altered for human causes.
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biodiversivist Posted 1:10 pm
05 Jan 2009
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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spaceshaper Posted 3:07 pm
05 Jan 2009
Very interesting about the carbon absorption of the Mojave by the way, I would not have guessed it was so until I googled it to check. There are many types of desert in the world of course and one wonders how much of them carry the same seasonal microflora that apparently do this beneficial carbon work. The great Australian desert is possibly very similar to the Mojave in this respect: the amazing shifting dunes that are my perhaps uninformed vision of the Sahara (thank you, 'The English Patient') perhaps not so much. But certainly this information gives us extra reason to be skeptical of the desert reclamation projects that we have seen promoted here in Grist for additionality in carbon capture.
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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spaceshaper Posted 3:16 pm
05 Jan 2009
Again, not quite point-of-use. But you can't fault them for resourcefulness!
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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spaceshaper Posted 3:33 pm
05 Jan 2009
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/2921809
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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