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This week’s CSP Today news brief includes Torresol Energy, Masdar, Sener; Siemens, Valoriza; U.S. Department of Energy; Masdar, TVP Solar.

Torresol: Valle 1 & 2 operational

Torresol Energy has started commercial operation of two 50 MW solar thermal power plants, located in Cadiz, in the South of Spain. The Valle 1 and Valle 2 plants - two identical 50 MW parabolic trough plants - are equipped with thermal storage.  

Construction on Valle 1 and Valle 2 began in December 2009, and was completed in December last year. This month the plants were connected to Spanish national grid for commercial operations. The projects were financed through seven Spanish commercial banks in 2009 for a total financing of €540 million. Sener led the engineering, procurement and construction contract for the two projects, as project manager, and has provided 100% of the technology and engineering for both plants.

The thermal storage of the plants allows them to continue producing energy for 7.5 hours at full power capacity without sunlight.

Torresol, a joint venture between Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company Masdar and Spanish engineering and construction firm Sener, has now three plants up and running, Valle 1 & Valle 2 and Gemasolar, in the South of Spain. It officially inaugurated Gemasolar in Fuentes de Andalucia, Spain late last year.

With these twin plants in Spain, Torresol has completed the first stage of its Strategic Plan, said Enrique Sendagorta, President of the company. He added that the plan is to start soon on other CSP projects in different countries located in what is referred to as the sun-belt region.

Siemens-Valoriza: Lebrija online

The Lebrija solar thermal power plant, located in southern Andalucía in Spain, has started feeding electricity into the power grid.

The plant, with a capacity of 50MW, gained approval for the RIPRE (Registro de Instalaciones de Producción de Régimen Especial) Final Registry from the regional government of the Spanish province of Andalucía for power generated from solar thermal power plants in the last week of December.

This is the first plant for which Siemens supplied both the steam turbine and the complete solar field, including solar receivers, collectors and mirrors.

Siemens and Valoriza won the EPC contract to install the plant, under a joint venture. Valoriza provided the civil works, power block, and heat transfer fluid system. In addition, Siemens provided integration, control system and engineering services. The two companies are jointly responsible for operation and maintenance.

The solar field in Lebrija consists of more than 400,000 square metres of mirrors, installed on 6,048 collectors, each with 28 individual mirrors.

US: DOE cash boost for solar thermal research

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced two opportunities within its Sunshot Initiative to drive transformational research in solar energy. The initiative is being taken to advance promising utility-scale solar energy technologies.

As part of its SunShot Initiative, the Department will provide up to US$10 million to university-based projects over five years to develop and demonstrate innovative heat transfer fluids for use in CSP energy systems.

The funding will be awarded as part of the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, a programme designed to advance research, accelerate technology transfer into the marketplace, and prepare a new generation of scientists and engineers to become leaders in the solar power industry. The DOE anticipates funding one to two projects through this opportunity.

The announcement has also opened the second round of SunShot Initiative postdoctoral research awards for applied research at universities, national laboratories, and other research facilities.

Masdar road tests solar thermal cooling

Masdar City, one of the integrated units of Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s multi-faceted renewable energy company, is testing Swiss company TVP Solar’s MT-Power panels for potential future use to meet the air-conditioning requirements of the city.

Masdar City has installed a field of MT-Power high-vacuum flat solar thermal panels for the solar cooling plant at Masdar City.

According to an official release, TVP Solar expects the MT-Power panels to provide over 70% solar-to-cooling conversion efficiency operating at 180°C to drive a double-effect absorption chiller. The panels capture diffuse and direct light, thus providing at least 30% higher energy output than any concentrating collector.

TVP Solar plans to deploy further MT-Power solar fields this year for solar air-conditioning applications with double stage absorption chiller in a hybrid natural gas/solar system configuration that will operate on a 24/7 basis, covering peak and base loads.