A Visionary Solar Power Plant
TOP PLANT: Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, Tonopah, Nevada
Thomas W. Overton, December 1, 2016 (Power Magazine)
“…[Nevada’s Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a concentrating solar power (CSP) plant built by SolarReserve] shares a lot of similarities with other solar-tower CSP plants…Just over 10,000 billboard-sized heliostats, each about 1,200 square feet, focus sunlight on a central receiver at the top of a 640-foot tower. The plant uses the heat collected to generate steam and drive a turbine generator…What sets [the 110 MW] Crescent Dunes apart from its predecessors is that it incorporates 10 hours of full-power thermal energy storage…[A] molten salt system circulates the salt from a cold tank, through the solar tower, where it’s heated from 550F to 1,050F…[and sent] through a turbine-generator, then to an air-cooled condenser…The plant sells its power to Nevada utility NV Energy under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA). Since reaching commercial operations in November 2015, Crescent Dunes has…quietly exceeded its obligations, delivering 105% of contracted output. The molten salt receiver has achieved 100% availability through 2016, and performance data show that it’s operating 2% above its expected efficiency…” click here for more
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