Spanish-American joint venture Termosolar Alcazar announced that its bid to build a 50 MW power tower solar thermal plant in the Spanish autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha has been accepted. Under the terms of the tender, the 50/50 joint venture between American company SolarReserve and Spanish renewables specialist Preneal will construct a power tower concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in the town of Alcazar de San Juan.
The Termosolar facility will be air cooled and combine power tower technology with molten salt energy storage, which will allow the plant to continue generating power at night and in adverse weather conditions. The storage system was designed by Pratt amp; Whitney Rocketdyne. The aerospace and turbine specialist received just over $10 million from the US Department of Energy earlier this month to refine the molten salt system, which will use a mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate as a heat storage medium. In the receiver atop the nearly 200 meter-high tower the molten salt is heated to more than 500 degrees Celsius (1000°F) and then stored in a highly insulated tank.
While Pratt amp; Whitney Rocketdyne does not provide specifics of how long the plant can run on the stored energy, the company says that “Because hot molten salt can be stored for days with little heat-loss, it can be used at night or on cloudy days to generate electricity.” SolarReserve is developing similar power tower CSP plants in the US at Crescent Dunes, Nevada (110 MW ) and Blythe, California (150 MW). (tph)
