Solar Millennium
July 1st marked the day that Europe’s first ever parabolic trough power plant, Andasol 1, was officially inaugurated under the patronage of the president of the Junta de Andalucía. In December 2008,Andasol 1 was connected to the grid and supplies up to 200,000 people in southern Spain with environmentally friendly electricity. With a collector surface of more than 510,000 square meters – equalling the area of 70 soccer fields – Andasol 1 also is the world’s largest solar power plant. For the first time ever, large thermal storage facilities are being used, enabling the plant to even generate solar power after sunset.
Andasol 1 was developed by Solar Millennium AG, which specialises in solar-thermal power plants, and constructed by the Spanish ACS/Cobra Group. The project company forAndasol 1 is a joint venture by ACS/Cobra (75%) and Solar Millennium (25%). Solar Millennium’s subsidiaryFlagsol contributed the technology for the solar field. In the immediate vicinity of Andasol 1, the solar power plantsAndasol 2 and 3, which are basically identical in construction, are being built. At presentAndasol 2 is in the start-up phase;Andasol 3will be connected to the grid in 2011. The entire gross power production capacity of the plants will total about 540 GWh per year. Thus, the plants will supply more than half a million people with power and save roughly 450,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year.
The power plants will mainly cover peak demand within the Spanish electricity supply system in the summer months. The high electricity demand is primarily caused by the high energy consumption of air-condition units. Each power plant has 50 megawatts of electric power and thermal storage facilities. A full storage unit guarantees additional power generation of about 7.5 hours – also at night. Each thermal storage facility consists of two tanks that are 14 m high and 36 m in diameter and can hold 28,500 tons of molten salt.
Tags: Europe, Parabolic Trough Concentrated Solar Thermal Power technology, Solar Millenium
Elimination of Carbon Dioxide production listed as a benefit – A secondary concern in a world challenged by the Asian Fact! Asians will command, with a very strong “Yuan”, a much larger share of worlds resources, fuels included, in the next decades – World’s resources are limited, finite in nature! This means a painful sharing – especially for Americans, who consume biggest share right now! Their dollar falling like a stone in value no longer commands 80% of world’s resources as it once did, and as is required for the survival of these larger-bodied humans and their extravagant lifestyles. This friction is already apparant in the recessions and near catastrophic bankruptcies of American banks, businesses. Fact is their “per capita costs to per capita output” ratios don’t work in light of the Asian fact! American EROI is sadly scewed to the negative and they struggle, bombs and all, to feed themselves! Solar in their South Western states and Prairie Wind Corridor developments on massive scale combined with huge Nuclear power plant developments and painful paradigm shifts away from the current social patterns like gasoline guzzling, high meat diets, impractical McMansion housing, will convulse America in the decades to come. As Asian population doubles once again, Western civilization will move to “Home-grown, home based” power sources of non-exportable nature such as Geo-thermal, Wind, Wave, Tidal, Solar just to survive the Asian fact: Asians are going to allow population growth to compensate for growing older population and aging workforces – effectively a population bomb on the Western World’s heads! Asians have become intellectually superior by education alone and Westerners are in great yellow peril! The great Red Dragon! Beware his powers!
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