Abengoa Solar Inc.’s Solana project, located in Gila Bend, Arizona, will soon be the world’s largest parabolic trough concentrating power plant, with a 250MW (megawatt) generating capacity. The clean power generation will displace some 475,000 tons of CO2 from an equivalent gas-powered electrical generation.
With the help of a US$1.45 billion (€1.11 billion) US DoE (Department of Energy) loan guarantee, the project will generate power for 70,000 homes and create around 1,700 jobs during construction. More than 900,000 mirrors will be used to create the parabolic reflectors during building.
The parabolic reflectors concentrate sun energy onto tubes of synthetic oil that pass through an oil-to-salt heat exchanger that heat up the molten salt. Some of the hot synthetic oil passes through another route to a steam generator and turbine. This storage system allows the power plant to continue to provide power long after the sun has set.
The US DoE has earmarked US$16.5 billion in loan guarantee for 16 clean energy projects across the US, with a total generation of 37 million mega-watt hours to power 3.3 million homes. These projects include the world's largest wind farm and the first US nuclear power plant to be built for 30 years, with a 2,200MW generating capacity.
Visit: http://www.abengoasolar.com/
Via US DoE
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written by jery , March 26, 2012