Biggest solar tower storage plant starts commissioning

By Giles Parkinson on 14 February 2014

As Ivanpah, the world’s biggest solar tower power plant comes on line, commissioning has begun on Crescent Dunes, the world’s biggest solar tower power plant that incorporates storage.

The 110MW Crescent Dunes project near Tonopah. Nevada, is 5 times bigger that other pilot and demonstration projects that have tested molten salt technology, and the first at what is regarded as “utility scale.”

The plant has been built by California-based Solar Reserve, which recently opened an office in Western Australia, and the storage capability means that it will have twice the output per MW of other solar technologies.

It also means that it can deliver electricity when needed. It has a contract to deliver electricity to Las Vegas between the hours of noon and midnight. As this graph shows, it can deliver its output in blocks, if needed, rather than the variable curves featured of solar technologies without storage.

The storage technology also eliminates the need for any backup fossil fuels, such as natural gas.

Solar Reserve says the commissioning is the initial stage of bringing the project into operations and includes system-by-system verification and startup, as well as equipment calibration and testing.

This includes “energization” of the utility interconnection system and other electrical systems, and testing and calibration of the heliostat field, which comprises more than 10,000 “billboard-sized” mirrors that track the sun and total more than 1 million square meters of glass.

Commissioning also includes systems unique to Crescent Dunes such as a Heliostat Field Control System that will control and concentrate the sun’s energy and also the Molten Salt System that will harness, store and transform the sun’s energy into superheated steam, making this the most advanced solar power plant in the world.

The facility also includes a dry cooled condenser in a hybrid configuration to minimize water use to levels well below that of conventional power plants.

“Start of commissioning of the Crescent Dunes solar power plant marks a critical milestone for the project as well as the solar industry,” CEO Kevin Smith said in a statement. “We are now able to build utility-scale power plants, fueled only by the sun, which operate on-demand, day and night, just like traditional fossil fuel or nuclear power plants.

SolarReserve’s industry-leading solar thermal energy storage technology solves the intermittency issue that limits the use of other renewable energy projects and thus enables firm, reliable delivery of electricity whether or not the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.”

Abengoa is also looking to build a 110MW solar tower plant with 17 hours of storage in Chile.

Breakthrough technology that uses solar energy to augment intermittent wind energy

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Category: Solar

22 Apr 2013

 

Published on Monday, 22 April 2013 05:30

One of Israel’s leading investment firms in renewable energy, Capital Nature, has recently invested in a young Israeli company, Augwind, who has developed a technology that provides solutions to the challenges of wind power production.

The technology developed by Augwind has successfully found a way to utilize wind generated energy combined with solar energy, even when the wind isn’t blowing.

Today, the production of energy from the wind faces two major challenges: Firstly, the inability to predict when the wind will blow, at what force and at which direction. Secondly, the wind blows mostly at night, when there is significantly less power consumption than during the main hours of the day. It is therefore necessary to store and release it during peak hours, according to demand.

To overcome such issues with wind as an energy source, Augwind’s breakthrough technology that combines wind and solar energy, is a significant step forward in the field.

The company developed a product that can be installed on pre-existing wind turbines. The product stores the energy that is generated by the wind throughout the night and consolidates it with solar energy that has been accumulated throughout the day. Once the two energies have been combined, they can be stored as compressed air and released according to required quantities.

Production costs are among the lowest for alternative energies and because the technology only requires turbines that are already existent, Augwind is offering the product for around 50% cheaper than other alternative energy solutions.

Augwind’s mastermind, Or Yogev, is an engineer with a PhD from Caltech University in California. He returned to Israel to establish Augwind and to oversee its success. The technological center of Capital Nature, the Southern Arava region in Israel, provides the ideal weather for examining prototypes of this technology, which will assist significantly in its future commercial application.

Solar power when the sun has set

November 21, 2012 -- Updated 0139 GMT (0939 HKT)

The battery that could power the world

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Solar, wind energy can't provide reliable 24/7 power without a way to store it
• Donald Sadoway at MIT is working on a battery that would enable low-cost, mass storage
• He says if power could be stored, the energy business would be changed forever
• Sadoway: Answer to our energy issues isn't only conservation or drilling, it's innovation

(CNN) -- What if we could use solar energy when the sun has set, or wind energy when the air is calm? Donald Sadoway is working on a way to make that happen.

The professor of materials chemistry at MIT is leading an effort to develop a new kind of battery -- a "liquid metal battery" -- that would enable the economical storage of energy from solar, wind and other sources so that it could be used when homes and businesses need it.

Sadoway's work landed him on TIME's list of the world's 100 most influential people this year and last month he was a guest on theColbert Report.

The missing link to renewable energy

In March, he described his project in an interview with CNN after giving a talk at the TED conference in Long Beach, California. "We need to have reliable sources of electricity. And wind and solar in harmony with a battery become reliable 24/7," Sadoway said.

Watch Donald Sadoway's TED Talk

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Describing his group's work at MIT, he said, "We think it's a breakthrough because it addresses all of the uniquely demanding performance requirements of the grid, namely uncommonly high power, long service lifetime, but in addition, meeting the superlow price point of this application.

TED.com: Using nature to grow batteries

Sadoway explained the importance of the liquid metal battery in his TED Talk this way:

"The electricity powering the lights in this theater was generated just moments ago. Because the way things stand today, electricity demand must be in constant balance with electricity supply. If in the time that it took me to walk out here on this stage, some tens of megawatts of wind power stopped pouring into the grid, the difference would have to be made up from other generators immediately. But coal plants, nuclear plants can't respond fast enough. A giant battery could.

Secret Ingredient To Making Solar Energy Work: Salt

Todd Woody, 04.04.12, 06:00 PM EDT 
Forbes Magazine dated April 23, 2012

Energy from the sun is hard to store, undercutting its usefulness and efficiency. Can Halotechnics solve the riddle by mixing in molten salt?

Eric Millette

The solar thermal power plant business is all about big: Square miles of mirrors in the desert that surround 600-foot-tall towers to generate massive megawatts of electricity for multibillion-dollar price tags. Big Solar’s ability to compete against fossil fuels, though, could come down to grains of salt.

In a small lab in the San Francisco Bay Area biotech hub of Emeryville, scientists at a startup called Halotechnics are sifting through thousands of mixtures of molten salt. They’re searching for the right combinations that will allow solar thermal energy to be stored cheaply and efficiently so it can be dispatched to generate electricity after the sun sets. In other words, the 24/7 solar power plant.

Storing Wind Power as Ice?

Storing Wind Power as Ice?

Of the total amount of electricity generated by all sources, about 75% is used by buildings, a major fraction of which is consumed by air conditioners. With the demand of renewable energy increasing with every passing day, inventors are trying to find the best possible means to store the generated energy during the best time, to provide power when the generators aren’t getting the resources they need. It is a natural phenomenon that the wind blows stronger at night than in the day. We don’t need that extra energy during nighttime. We can store this energy and use it during daytime when the load is too much on the grid.

Lancaster Wind Systems, others bank on power storage | Alberta Oil – Energy Sector Insight

Lancaster Wind Systems, others bank on power storage | Alberta Oil – Energy Sector Insight

Alternative energy hand off to help solve storage issues

Alternative energy hand off to help solve storage issues

The University of Minnesota has licensed its solar and wind energy storage system to SustainX, a developer ofenergy storage technologies. The storage system was developed last year by a team of researchers led by Professor Perry Li. The system was developed to help make the storage of solar and wind energies more efficient, which would also make them more alluring for use in business, industry, and residential endeavors. SustainX will be using the system to create new storage technologies that may accomplish the goals University of Minnesota researchers had envisioned.