The Global Community for Sustainable Energy Professionals
1 hour / Central European Time (Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Madrid)
Fernando Nuno & Hans De Keulenaer, Leonardo ENERGY
Thin film, silicon, concentrated solar power (CSP), concentrated photovoltaics (CPV), ... These are just some of the terms demonstrating that solar technologies are rapidly entering the electricity system in countries such as the United States, Spain or Australia. Furthermore, the largest improvements, which will bring generation cost closer to competitive prices are just around the corner.
This webinar is dedicated to utility scale and baseload solar technologies: CSP and CPV.
What is the status of these technologies, their improvement potential and perspectives for the future? What are the running projects and expectations in terms of market development? How is the levelized energy price expected to evolve in the near future to reach grid parity? Additionally, more practical aspects will be presented, as the conditions required by a CSP project to be viable or the keys to successfully finance the project.
After this briefing presentation, a discussion with participants will be launched on questions such as storage capabilities and system operation. Other questions from attendees are welcome to guide the discussion.
Comments
Question for you on Slide 30. Water consumption of 6m^3 / MWh seems high. How do you arrive at that consumption rate?
Thanks,
Mark W Lausten
mark.lausten@ee.doe.gov
I believe the slide presentation is very good. I like the plan laid out in the slides and believe we should find businesses to implement it. But, I believe the plan does not help the comsumer's price of electricity. Even though the price of producing electricity would be cheaper; the transmition rate would be astronomical (pun intended). Home owners should be involved. Home owners should have solar panels installed as well. This would dramatically decrease home electric usage and bring the price of electricity down for home owners.
Dear Mr Lausten,
Water consumption figure comes from a reference Project under construction in Puertollano (Spain) by Iberdrola Renovables. The main characteristics are :
• Installed Power : 50 MWe
• Electricity generation : 114,2 GWh/year
• Electricity consumption for auxiliaries : 11 GWh/year
• Natural Gas support : 15% - 59 GWh / year
• Capacity factor : 2062 hours (out of 8760)
• Water consumption : 570 000 m3/year
• Construction began : March 2007
• Start operation in : end 2008
From a thermodynamic point of view, considering a rankine cycle with efficiency of 25%, the generation of 1 MWh of electricity needs a heat evacuation of 3 MWh. This needs the vaporization of 4,4 m3 of water in a cooling tower. So we have already 4.4 m3. Add some water for mirrors cleaning and miscellaneous use and you reach very quickly 5 m3 / MWh.
Please contact me for further inquiries (fng@eurocopper.org)
Kind regards
Fernando Nuño
In dry climates cooling is assured by air heat exchangers (avoiding the high water consumption from wet cooling towers). This solution needs a very high ventilation, which increases considerably the auxiliary electricity consumption. Additionally, the efficiency of Rankine cycle is reduced, as the outlet pressure of steam turbine is relatively higher (due to higher cooling temperature : ambient air – in general 30ºC to 45ºC – plus delta T from heat exchanger – 10ºC or more - ).