Acciona Opens First CSP Solar Plant in Spain

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Acciona Energia SA (Navarra, Spain) has opened the company's first concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Alvarado, Spain, located in the Extremadura region in the southwest of the country. The 50-megawatt (MW) Alvarado I plant cost 236 million euros and can generate enough electricity to power 28,000 homes. Situated on a 130-hectare site, the facility consists of 184,320 mirrors aligned in rows to capture sunlight, along with 768 solar collectors with a total length of about 74 kilometers.

Alvarado I will generate 102 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, which the company says will offset about 98,000 tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions that a coal-powered plant with equal capacity would generate in a year.

Acciona said that construction on the plant began in February 2008 and involved shifting more than a million cubic meters of earth. More than 350 people worked throughout the 18-month construction period, and now a team of 31 will take over the operation and maintenance. The plant uses the same parabolic cylinder technology as the company's 64-MW CSP plant, Nevada Solar One, which is located in the U.S. and has been operating since 2007.

Parabolic cylinder energy uses rows of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto collector tubes arranged along the mirror's focal plane. The tubes contain a fluid that can reach a temperature of up to 400 degrees Celsius. The fluid is transported to an interchange containing water for producing steam that drives a conventional turbine connected to a generator for producing electricity.

Acciona maintains that one of the key advantages of CSP plants is that they are at the peak of their production during the central hours of the day, when the demand for air conditioning in nearby cities is at its highest.

As well as Alvarado I, Acciona has three other plants under construction in Spain: one in Majadas de Tiétar (Cáceres) and two in Palma del Río (Cordoba). Each will have an installed capacity of 50 MW, which means the company will have a total of 200 MW of CSP facilities operating in Spain. Planning permission is also being sought for another 50-MW facility in Alvarado.

Recently, Acciona expressed interest in joining the ambitious $550 billion Desertec solar project in Africa. The Desertec project, spearheaded by a group of mainly German power, financial and insurance companies, hopes to harness the solar power of the Sahara desert across North Africa and then pump that power to Europe, eventually supplying up to 15% of the total power demand. For additional information, see related news item from July 20, 2009 - Europe's African Solar Project Moves Forward.

Speaking to Clean Tech Insight, Acciona Chairman Juan Manuel Entrecanales said: "We are holding the first talks in order to get on board as soon as possible. It's an ambitious project, but possible in the mid- and long-term."

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