Abengoa’s Arizona Solana plant, located in the desert near Gila Bend, passed its commercial testing this week. Solana, the 280-megawatt solar thermal power plant, produced electricity without direct sunlight. The announcement was made on Wednesday.
Solana can store the sun's power for six hours via thermal energy. The plant uses concentrated solar power (CSP (News - Alert)) technology to collect the sun's heat. Solana’s distinctive feature is its thermal energy storage. Solana is one of the largest plants in the world using parabolic mirrors. It has 2,700 parabolic trough mirrors that follow the sun to focus heat on a pipe that contains a heat transfer fluid, which is a synthetic oil. The heat transfer fluid flows to steam boilers, where it heats water to create steam. The steam then drives 140-megawatt turbines to produce electricity.
What makes Solana stand out from other plants is its ability to store the heat from the sun for electrical production at night, using substantial thermal storage to keep the juice flowing for hours after sundown.
Photo of Solana via phys.org
IEEE Spectrum (News - Alert) recently released a report on the Arizona plant pointing out that proving the storage tech can work is a huge step for the solar industry. The report stated, “Intermittency is still among the most common complaints about industrial-scale renewable energy."
In its report the IEEE (News - Alert) Spectrum referred to the Arizona plant as a “solar powered wonderland.”
According to Abengoa, an international technology and engineering company who began construction on Solana in 2010, "Solana's thermal storage system, without the use of the solar field, can produce clean energy for six hours at maximum power." These six hours, said the company, can satisfy Arizona's peak electricity demands during summer evenings and early night hours. Abendgoa added that "Dispatchability also eliminates intermittency issues that other renewables, such as wind and photovoltaics, contend with, providing stability to the grid and thus increasing the value of the energy generated by CSP."
Solana has a power purchase agreement with Arizona's biggest electricity utility, Arizona Public Service. The agreement covers the full solar plant's output for its customers. Electricity generated at Solana at its peak would power around 70,000 homes.
Don Brandt, APS president and chief executive officer, said he regarded “Solana as providing a boost toward the APS goal of making Arizona ‘the solar capital’ of America.”
Edited by Alisen Downey