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 UK Guardian reports that in the desert 20 miles outside Seville, the Spanish company Abengoa will be deploying over sun-tracking 1,000 mirrors — each “about half the size of a tennis court” — to superheat water to 260C 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.
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.
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.”
Super cool stuff. Concentrated solar thermal is awesome because it utilizes relatively barren desert land, has the potential to store energy and supply baseload power, and is relatively cheap and efficient. I'm glad to see Spain taking CSP so seriously.
