A unique thermosolar power station in southern Spain can shrug off cloudy days: energy stored when the sun shines lets it produce electricity even during the night.
The Gemasolar station, up and running since last May, stands out in the plains of Andalusia.
From the road between Seville and Cordoba, one can see its central tower lit up like a beacon by 2,600 solar mirrors, each 120 square metres (28,500 square feet), that surround it in an immense 195-hectare (480-acre) circle.
“It is the first station in the world that works 24 hours a day, a solar power station that works day and night!” said Santago Arias, technical director of Torresol Energy, which runs the station.
The mechanism is “very easy to explain,” he said: the panels reflect the suns rays on to the tower, transmitting energy at an intensity 1,000 times higher than that of the sun’s rays reaching the earth.
Energy is stored in a vat filled with molten salts at a temperature of more than 500 degrees C (930 F). Those salts are used to produce steam to turn the turbines and produce electricity.
It is the station’s capacity to store energy that makes Gemasolar so different because it allows the plant to transmit power during the night, relying on energy it has accumulated during the day.
“I use that energy as I see fit, and not as the sun dictates,” Arias explained.
As a result, the plant produces 60 percent more energy than a station without storage capacity because it can work 6,400 hours a year compared to 1,200-2,000 hours for other solar power stations, he said.
“The amount of energy we produce a year is equal to the consumption of 30,000 Spanish households,” Arias said, an annual saving of 30,000 tonnes of CO2.
Helped by generous state aid, renewable energies have enjoyed a boom in Spain, the world number two in solar energy and the biggest wind power producer in Europe, ahead of Germany.
For the Gemasolar product, foreign investors helped too: Torresol Energy is a joint venture between the Spanish engineering group Sener, which holds 60 percent, and Abu Dhabi-financed renewable energy firm Masdar.
“This type of station is expensive, not because of the raw material we use, which is free solar energy, but because of the enormous investment these plants require,” Arias said.
The investment cost exceeds 200 million euros ($260 million).
But “the day when the business has repaid that money to the banks (in 18 years, he estimates), this station will become a 1,000-euro note printing machine,” he said, recalling that oil prices have soared from $28 a barrel in 2003 to nearly $130.
For now, the economic crisis has nevertheless cast a shadow over this kind of project: Spain is battling to slash its deficit as it slides into recession and has suspended aid to new renewable energy projects.
Andalusia, hard hit by the economic crisis with the country’s highest unemployment rate at 31.23 percent, holds regional elections on March 25.
“We have three projects ready but stalled” because of the aid suspension, Arias said, admitting that in a difficult global economy the group has not managed to sell the Gemasolar techology abroad despite huge interest outside Spain.
kind of sun we r gona experience this summer in pak, such solar stations should be super successful,,,,,only if we cud be sincere wid ourselves………..
do you know what 260M USD is!!!?? Mansha, the richest dude in PK, his total worth is barely touching 1B USD…. these kind of things cant happen in PK, unless we get foreign investment, but ofcourse no sane individual/company/conglomerate wants to open up in a country like ours where they dont even know if theyll be able to visit their investment ever. There have been instances when our entrepreneurs have convinced leaders elsewhere to invest here, but their own employees families line up outside their offices demanding/requesting that their husbands/fathers dont get sent to Pakistan. A general conception in every house in the world that has a TV knows not to step foot in our country. Its quite pathetic what our country has come to over the last 2-3 decades.
@ talib, yar we have so much sun aval tht such kind of solar power sta will get overcharged 🙂
ive seen the documentary on Nat Geo….its awesome
260 Million $ divided by 180 million people .. 1.44 $ per person .. considering the fuel adjustment charges which each household pays every month is a lot more than this amount .. Its workable .. collection of money can be made through electricity bill or some other reliable system and no one would even notice 🙂
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