Doe Approves $1.45b Loan For Solar Plant

It will be the largest plant of its kind in the world, capable of powering 70,000 homes without any emissions. The Solana plant, built by Abengoa Solar, Inc. will break ground later this year near Gila Bend, AZ, 70 miles southwest of Phoenix. In addition to its remarkable size, Solana will perform another trick: it will be able to store the power it generates during the day for use at another time.

Just How Big is Big?

The plant will make use of 900,000 parabolic mirrors to focus the sun’s energy on a heat transfer fluid. That fluid is expected to reach a temperature of 735F, heating water to steam and driving conventional steam turbines to generate electricity. The plant should produce 280 megawatts of power when completed.

How Will Energy Be Stored?

Perhaps the most exciting feature of this particular solar plant is the fact that it will be able to store energy for use when weather conditions don’t permit it to generate power from the sun. A set of large “thermos-like buildings” will be filled with molten salt. As specific times throughout the production cycle the heat generated by the mirrors will be used to heat the salt.

When the fluid responsible for generating steam power can not utilize solar energy to gain its heat, it will instead use the heat stored within the molten salt to do so. The salt can be used this way for up to six hours after it was heated. This system will allow the plant to use the sun’s energy long after it has set, often during hours when demand is highest, like during the early evening hours of the winter.

Just One of Sixteen

Solana is just one of 16 loans that the DOE will fund with $16.5B earmarked for clean energy projects. With a total projected energy gain of 37 million megawatt-hours of energy, the projects could power over 3 million homes when complete. Other projects have included wind farms and nuclear generation plants.

By: Michael R.

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Michael Rupkalvis works with the LedBulbsandLights website. The site features a variety of different types of environmentally-friendly LED products, including T8 4ft LED tubelights and other LED lighting.