Solar power: the Solnova 3 plant was put into service in Spain

This concentration solar power plant is equipped with parabolic trough collector cylinders that provide a capacity of 50 MW. This is the second of five identical plants that Albengoa Solar is building near Seville

The Spanish company Solar Albengoa began commercial operation near Seville of the 50 MW Solnova 3 solar power plant.

It’s a concentration solar CCP (Cilindrical Parabolic Plant), whose concept is similar to the (solar part of the) Archimede facility that Enel is developing at Priolo, in Sicily. That is to say, it uses cylindrical parabolic mirror collectors (each one 150 metres long, so that the total surface covered by the mirrors is approximately 300,000 square feet) that concentrate solar radiation onto a heat-absorbing pipe located on their focal point. The special fluid that flows inside the pipe is then heated, reaching high temperature (hundreds of degrees centigrade), in order to produce the water vapour needed to operate a conventional turbo-generator, where electricity is produced.

The plant covers a surface of about 15 hectares and can generate over 114 million kWh per year, enough to meet the electricity demand of about 25,700 Spanish homes, preventing the emission of 31,400 tons of CO2.

Now that this new plant is operational, Albengoa has put into service and managed 143 MW of solar power. Another 350 MW are under construction, mainly using tower and mirror field technology.

(May 2010)