Acciona building $800 mil solar plant in Spain

Acciona Energy, an alternative energy company based out of Spain, can boast about its reputation for building clean technologies and lots of them. It is the world leader in wind power, totalling 5,300MW in 192 separate wind parks, and it built the first modern concentrating solar plant in the U.S., the Nevada Solar One (pictured above), to date the third largest in the world. And it keep sexpanding.

Recently, Acciona announced that it's planning on building two solar thermal plants in Cordoba, Spain, each with a capacity of 50MW, entering into service in 2010, and costing 500 million euros (roughly $850 million). The two facilities will produce an amazing 224 million KWh per year, enough to power the equivalent of 75,000 homes.

A fluid (oil) runs through these tubes that reaches a very high temperature (400º C). This fluid is sent from the solar field 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 the advantage of producing their peak power during the hottest part of the day, when demand for electricity is generally the highest. The disadvantage, however, is that it cannot actively produce energy during the night and must rely on passive heat remaining in the system, or stored energy which can be released (underground compressed air storage, stored energy flywheels, etc.).

via Ecolectic.org