Torresol Energy, a joint venture between Masdar, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mubadala Development Company, and SENER, a leading international multidiscipline engineering company, with offices in Abu Dhabi, has secured US$760 million project finance loans for the construction of its twin Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants – Valle 1 and Valle 2 – in Andalucía, Spain
The total investment value for the two plants is US$1bn.
Work on the two 50 MW Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants began in March 2009 and is the first time that twin thermo solar plants have been built simultaneously. Both plants incorporate energy solutions developed by SENER, including molten salt thermal storage capacity of up to 7.5 hours. This means that the state-of-the-art plants will be capable of generating electricity at night and through periods of poor sunlight, enabling a continuous supply of electricity and overcoming intermittency, one of the drawbacks of some renewable technologies.
Valle 1 & 2, together with the Gemasolar Central Tower Plant (17MW / 110GWh per year), which was project financed in November 2008 and continues to progress construction as expected, represents a total investment by Torresol Energy of $1.4bn across 3 CSP projects over the past 12 months.
Talking on the announcement Enrique Sendagorta, Chairman of Torresol Energy, said:
“We are very proud that Valle 1 and Valle 2 solar plants secured this important financial support, which allows us to continue on schedule with our strategic plans”.
He added;
“With a combined production of 340 GWh per annum, which equates to the clean and safe energy for over 80,000 homes and a saving of 90,000 tons of CO2 emissions every year, Valle 1 and 2 will be leaders in the delivery of concentrated solar power and a major contribution to the region’s power supply. A significant feature of these plants will be their ability to produce electricity at night and at times of poor sunlight, which is obviously an important consideration for consumers who require and demand uninterrupted electricity supplies.”
Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO, Masdar, said: “The CSP projects currently under construction in Spain will introduce and test new technologies, which will help promote CSP as an economically competitive and viable alternative to traditional power sources. Through Torresol Energy, we are actively promoting the development and operation of large-scale CSP plants throughout the world and hope to implement additional projects across Southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the Southwest United States”.
The construction of the new plants will have additional benefits for Spain, such as an estimated 3,200 new direct employment opportunities during the two year construction period – with a further 150 specialised professionals required to manage operations after completion.
| VALLE 1 and VALLE 2VALLE 1 and VALLE 2 are two adjacent 50 MW plants of electrical energy generation with similar characteristics located in San José del Valle (Cadiz, Spain). The construction of these plants started in March 2009.The technology used by these two twin plants is the parabolic trough collectors. Each of them will consist of a solar field of 510,000 m2 of SENERtrough kind collectors, previously developed and qualified by SENER. These collectors will count on a high accuracy optical sensor that will follow the sun from east to west to accumulate, this way, the maximum solar radiation.The expected net power production for each of the VALLE 1 and VALLE 2 plants is 175 GWh/year. Thanks to their respective thermal storage systems, with 7 hours capacity, both plants will provide with energy without fluctuation or interruptions, contributing to the power supply stability for more than 3,500 hours per year. |  By using the concentrated solar radiation as the primary energy, VALLE 1 and VALLE 2 projects will save around 95,000 CO2 emissions tons a year. Thus, they will remarkably contribute to comply with the goal of reaching 12% of the Spanish energy requirements from renewable sources in 2010. |
To Learn more about Concentrated Solar Thermal technology Click here
Tags: concentrated solar power, CSP, energy, renewable, renewable energy, solar thermal, Spain
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“The total investment value for the two (50 MW Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)) plants is US$1bn.”
That means $1 BN for 100 MW – or $10M per MW. Seems pretty pricey since the capacity will still be rather low.
I would appreciate some clarification from the author or other readers, but my understanding is that the molten salt thermal storage technology – while it does allow storage of power – doesn’t increase the overall output of the system. In other words, if the system can only capture energy from sunlight for – say – 12 hours during the day, that energy can either be converted to electricity immediately or stored to produce electricity later, but the system obviously cannot PRODUCE energy directly from the sun at night.
In other words, if the 100MW system is producing 175 GWH each year, then it has a capacity factor of about 20% – assuming I did my math correctly. That is not much better than some PV technologies.
Thus, while intermittency is reduced, low capacity is not. This is good, but we can do better.
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