South Australia is set to build the largest
single-tower solar thermal power station in the world
(Credit: SolarReserve)
Just a month after the state government of South Australia
announced a deal with Tesla to
create the largest lithium-ion battery storage facility in the
world, it has now revealed plans to build the biggest, single-tower
solar thermal power plant on the planet with a proposed output of
150 megawatts.
The Aurora Solar Energy Project will be built and managed by
SolarReserve, one of the leaders in large-scale international solar
thermal projects and the company behind the
Rice Solar Energy Project that was to be built in California,
but which has now been put on "indefinite hold" following changes to
investment tax credits for renewable energy.
The power plant slated for Port Augusta in South
Australia is based on the same design, with solar energy focused by
arrays of heliostats onto a central tower where molten salt
technology is used to store the energy as heat so the plant can
generate electricity day or night.
Aurora will be able to power an estimated 90,000 homes
and generate 495 gigawatt hours of electricity per year, which
equates to about 5 percent of South Australia's energy needs. The
molten salts provide 1,100 MW of energy storage, giving the power
station up to eight hours of full load storage, meaning it can
operate with a consistent output 24 hours a day.
There are a couple of other giant solar thermal
facilities around the world, but none have as large a single-tower
power output as this proposed Aurora facility in Australia. The
Ivanpah Solar Electric facility in California consists of three
towers generating a gross capacity of 392 megawatts, while a
recently announced SolarReserve project in Chile is set to feature
two towers with a gross capacity of 260 megawatts.
The Aurora Solar Energy Project will kick off
construction next year and it is hoped to be ready to produce
electricity by 2020.
Take a look at how SolarReserve's molten salt energy
process works in the video below.
Source:
SolarReserve
http://newatlas.com/solar-reserve-thermal-power-south-australia/50896