De aprobarse, se realizará en el Llano de la Balsa, un paraje situado al sur de la ciudad, en la carretera nacional que une Ayora y Almansa. Respecto a la superficie ocupada, se preve que los 30 megavatios de potencia requerirán unas 150 hectáreas.
La tecnología elegida por Accciona está basada en los cilindros parabólicos y es la misma que la compañía ha probado satisfactoriamente en la planta "Nevada Solar One", en Estados Unidos, la mayor construida en el mundo en los últimos 18 años, con 64 MW.
Actualmente hay 135 MW de termosolar en operación y hay solicitudes para instalar más de 4.000 MW. Acciona conectó a red en junio de 2007 la mayor planta solar termoeléctrica instalada en el mundo en los últimos 18 años. Ubicada en el estado de Nevada (EE UU), Nevada Solar One, de 64 MW de potencia, ha representado una inversión de 220 millones de euros, asumida por la compañía en un 97,75% -95% de forma directa y el resto por su participación del 55% en la sociedad Acciona Solar Power (antes Solargenix Inc), poseedora del 5% restante-.
Acciona se convirtió así en referencia internacional en el sector solar termoeléctrico, una tecnología con gran potencial de crecimiento, que tiene la peculiaridad de producir electricidad a gran escala en los picos de la demanda eléctrica -cuando el consumo de aire acondicionado está en los niveles más altos-.
La planta se halla ubicada en el desierto de Nevada, en el paraje de Eldorado Valley, término de Boulder City. Ocupa una superficie de 1,4 millones de metros cuadrados y consta de 760 colectores cilindro-parabólicos (totalizan 76 kilómetros lineales), que concentran la irradiación solar y permiten aprovechar la energía captada en forma de calor para producir electricidad.
La instalación genera unos 130 millones de kWh anuales -equivalentes al consumo de unos 14.000 hogares-, producción que se inyecta en la red y es adquirida por las compañías eléctricas Nevada Power y Serra Pacific, según contrato de compra suscrito a 20 años. Ello contribuye al cumplimiento de los requerimientos establecidos por el estado de Nevada para alcanzar en 2013 una cobertura del 20% del consumo eléctrico mediante energías renovables -un 5% exclusivamente a través de energía solar-.
La energía solar termoeléctrica, que tuvo un destacado desarrollo en EE UU entre 1985 y 1991, conoce ahora perspectivas muy favorables por el fuerte impulso proyectado en cuatro estados del Suroeste del país -California, Nevada, Arizona y Nuevo México- donde se concentran los mayores índices de irradiación del país. La iniciativa de Acciona resulta así pionera en la materialización de un proyecto ligado a ese nuevo escenario.
En España, Acciona promueve cuatro plantas de 50 MW cada una. La planta de Alvarado, en Badajoz, ha iniciado su construcción en febrero de 2008 y entrará en operación en el segundo semestre de 2009, mientras que Palma del Río II (Córdoba), comenzó a construirse en octubre pasado y será concluida en 2010.
En Palma del Río se instalará una segunda planta de 50 MW, mientras que la cuarta de este grupo de proyectos se localizará en Majadas de Tiétar (Cáceres).
La compañía también ha construido una planta termosolar para terceros. Inaugurada en 2006, la planta termoeléctrica de Saguaro, en Arizona (EE UU), fue construida llave en mano por Acciona Solar Power., filial de Acciona Energía, para la compañía eléctrica APS.
De 1 MW de potencia, fue la primera en el mundo en incorporar tecnología de operación automática y ha permitido mejorar la calidad del servicio de distribución por parte de APS, al reducir las pérdidas en el transporte de electricidad desde sus centros de generación a los consumidores.
Al poder funcionar también sin conexión al sistema eléctrico, este tipo de plantas -de tecnología propia- son adecuadas para zonas aisladas de red, lo que ha suscitado notable interés en países en vías de desarrollo.
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ACCIONA Energy two solar thermal power plants in Cordoba (Spain) totaling 100 MW with an investment of almost euros 500 million
ACCIONA Energy will build two thermal solar power plants (50 MW capacity each) in Palma del Río (Córdoba, southern Spain). The facilities represent an investment close to 500 million euros and their entry into service is planned for 2010. The plants will produce 244 million kilowatt-hours per annum, equivalent to the electricity consumption of 75,000 homes.
ACCIONA is the first Spanish company with a commercially operational plant using parabolic trough technology -Nevada Solar One, in the USA-, the same technology that is used in the two projected Spanish plants. The company currently has over 2,000 MW under development in the USA and another 200 MW in Spain, in four plants.
The Palma del Río thermal solar project was presented today in an informative meeting attended by the Director of Thermal Electric Business of ACCIONA Energy, José Monzonís, and the mayor of Palma del Río, José Antonio Ruiz Almenara. The plants will cover 260 hectares on a site 4 miles from the town -a surface area equivalent to 364 soccer fields.
Building work on the Palma del Río II plant, located further south, will start in the second semester of 2008; it is expected to be completed in the first semester of 2010. Work on Palma del Río I is expected to start in the first semester of 2009 and will be grid connected in the second semester of 2010.
Each of the projected plants (50 MW capacity) consists of 760 collectors and 182,400 parabolic trough mirrors. These concentrate solar radiation into 18,240 reception tubes located in the focal line. A fluid (oil) runs through these tubes that reaches a very high temperature (400º C). This fluid is sent from the solar filed to the power unit where the heat is transferred to a heat exchanger, through which water runs that turns into steam. The steam is taken to a turbine connected to a generator that produces electricity. Following its transformation to high voltage it will be evacuated to the grid through a substation at Villanueva del Rey (in the municipality of Écija).
Thermal solar power plants have a positive feature in that they generate more electricity in periods of high consumption: around midday in the hottest months, when demand for air conditioning is very high. This represents guaranteed capacity for the electric power system when it is most needed.
To date there has not been a commercially operational plant using parabolic trough technology in Spain. The eleven months of operation of the 64 MW facility in Nevada, owned by ACCIONA, have demonstrated the potential of this technology.
The fact that the company has applied its own technology in the areas of design, construction, operation and maintenance guarantee the reliability of this type of facility. Indeed, the technologists who developed Nevada Solar One are the same people who worked actively in the development of this technology in the 1980s and early 1990s in California.
Thermal solar power plants were developed to a great extent in the United States between 1985 and 1991 and nine facilities were installed -all in the Mojave desert, in California- with a total capacity of 354 MW. The two biggest (80 MW each) were built in 1990 and 1991. A series of incidents (problems in the owning company, the removal of production incentives, the deregulation of power supplies in California, and others) meant that no other plants of this type were built afterwards despite the existing energy potential. This situation started to change with the promotion of solar power in a number of states in the southwest of the USA, where the highest levels of solar radiation in the country are found.
In Spain, the national Renewable Energy Plan set the objective of 500 MW operational by 2010. ACCIONA expects to have completed four plants by then: the two at Palma del Río and two in Extremadura (Alvarado, already under construction, and Majadas); total capacity 200 MW.
ACCIONA starts work on its third concentrating solar power plant in Spain, representing an investment of 237 million euros
Located in Majadas de Tiétar (Cáceres province, southwest Spain), this 50 megawatt-capacity facility will produce clean energy equivalent to the electricity consumption of around 30,000 homes.
The plant will enter service in the second half of 2010 and will create between 300 and 400 jobs in the construction phase.
By the end of 2010 ACCIONA plans to have five concentrating solar power plants in operation –four in Spain and one in the USA (in service since 2007)- accounting for an overall investment of around 1.25 billion euros.
Nevada solar oneACCIONA Energy has started construction work on a 50 MW concentrated solar power (CSP) plant at Majadas de Tiétar (Cáceres), representing an investment of 237 million euros. The facility, planned to enter service in summer 2010, will use solar trough technology to produce clean electricity equivalent to the consumption of 30,000 homes.
It is the third CSP plant built by ACCIONA in Spain, after Alvarado I (Badajoz), which will enter service this summer, and Palma del Rio II (Córdoba), which will be completed by the spring of 2010. All these facilities have a capacity of 50 MW and use the same technology applied by ACCIONA in its “Nevada Solar One” plant (64 MW), which has been operational since June 2007 in the US State of the same name.
These four plants, together with “Nevada Solar One”, account for an overall investment of around 1.25 billion euros.
ACCIONA is currently going through administrative procedures for a fifth CSP plant –Alvarado II, again with a capacity of 50 MW -, which will be built after the others.
The Majadas facility, like the others developed by ACCIONA in Spain, is based on solar trough collector technology, which the company has satisfactorily tested in its “Nevada Solar One” plant, the biggest built in the world in the last 18 years.
The Majadas plant will have a solar field of 135 hectares (equivalent to 189 football pitches). Eight hundred solar collectors will be installed on the site, covering a total of 48 linear miles, equipped with a total of 192,000 mirrors. These mirrors concentrate the sun’s rays onto collectors located in its focal line. Fluid runs through a circuit that heats it up to temperatures above 400 degrees. This fluid is used to produce water vapor and drive a conventional turbine that, connected to a generator, produces electricity.
The project means a major impact on the economic development of the area where it is located. It will create around 350 jobs in the construction phase and a further 31 in the operational phase, plus a large number of indirect and ancillary jobs in the area, located in the northern part of Cáceres province.
Nevada Solar One
Nevada Solar One is the second largest concentrated solar power plant in the world, with a nominal capacity of 64 MW and maximum capacity of 75 MW, as of June 2007. The project required an investment of $266 million USD and electricity production is estimated to be 134 million kilowatt hours per year.
It is the second solar thermal power plant built in the United States in more than 16 years and the largest STE plant built in the world since 1991. It is on the southeast fringes of Boulder City, Nevada. It was built by Acciona Solar Power (formerly Solargenix), a partially owned subsidiary of Spanish conglomerate Acciona Energy.[5] Acciona purchased a 55 percent stake in Solargenix and owns 95 percent of the project. Nevada Solar One is unrelated to the Solar One power plant in California.
A year earlier, Arizona Public Service’s Saguaro Solar Facility opened, in 2006, using similar technology, located 30 miles north of Tucson, and producing 1 MW. Nevada Solar One went online for commercial use on June 27, 2007.[8] It was constructed over a period of 16 months. The total project site is approximately 400 acres (0.6 mi² / 1.6 km²), while the solar collectors cover 300 acres (1.2 km2).
Nevada Solar One uses 760 parabolic troughs (using more than 180,000 mirrors) made by Flabeg AG in Germany that concentrate the sun’s rays onto thermos tubes running laterally through the troughs and containing a heat transfer fluid (solar receivers), in contrast to the power tower concentrator concept that California’s original Solar One project uses. These specially coated tubes, made of glass and steel, were designed and produced by Solel Solar Systems[10] as well as by Schott Glass in Germany. Motion control was supplied by Parker Hannifin, from components by Ansco Machine Company. The plant uses 18,240 of these four-meter-long tubes. The heat transfer fluid is heated to 735 °F (391 °C). The heat is then exchanged to water to produce steam which drives a conventional turbine.
Solar thermal power plants designed for solar-only generation are well matched to summer noon peak loads in areas with significant cooling demands, such as the southwestern United States. Using thermal energy storage systems, solar thermal operating periods can be extended to meet base load needs.[13] Given Nevada’s land and sun resources the state has the ability to produce more than 600 GW using solar thermal concentrators like those used by Nevada Solar One.
Nine parabolic concentrator facilities have been successfully operating in California’s Mojave Desert commercially since 1984 with a combined generating capacity of 354 MW for these Solar Energy Generating Systems. Other parabolic trough power plants being proposed are several 50 MW plants in Spain, and a 100 MW plant in Israel.
It has been proposed that massive expansion of solar plants such as Nevada Solar One has the potential to provide sufficient electricity to power the entire United States.
