Gemasolar - The World's First Baseload (24/7) Solar Power Plant

This video by "Solar Trillions" author Tony Seba shows Gemasolar, the world's first commercial utility-scale solar power plant.

Gemasolar is a 19.9-MW plant with a 15-hour 'battery'. Gemasolar's expected production is 110,000 MWh per year—or about enough to fully power 25,000 households. Gemasolar to produce electricity about 6,400 hours per year - a capacity factor of 75%. Gemasolar's power tower has a height of 140 meters (459.3 feet.)

The receiver on top of the tower is like a radiator that is heated to a temperature of about 565 degrees Celsius (1,050 degrees Farenheit) by the sunlight reflected by 2,650 heliostats with a total reflective surface of about 300,000 square meters (3.32 million square feet.)

http://www.tonyseba.com

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• solar energy
• baseload
• solar power tower
• nuclear
• clean energy economy
• climate change
• Gemasolar
• molten salt
• energy storage
• concentrating solar power
• desert power
• solar trillions

[21wf]

The mirrors can't use trackers. They have to face a particular direction to concentrate the heat. But that also means they're not moving with the sun for maximum heat concentration.

In the end, the efficiency is reduced. I guess that is the opportunity cost.

[tonyseba]

@21wf: the heliostats have to have a precision of measured in the hundredths of a degree so they have to have two-axis tracking. Each heliostat has two motors (if you pause the video you may notice them) each with a built-in pogrammable logic controller (PLC) that recalculates and readjusts the heliostat’s position every 4 seconds.

[fsteel2k]

Those optical light effects seem to be stationary and not an effect of the camera lens. Are they some sort of Rayleigh scattering perhaps?

[tonyseba]

@fsteel2k: I'm assuming you're referring to the 'halos' around the receiver on top of the tower. That's actually the heliostats being tested. You may have noticed that not all the heliostats are focusing on the tower (some are horizontal and some vertical.) Heliostats are constantly being tested and may go in and out of focus with the tower. Those 'halos' are specific coordinates that heliostats point to as part of the tests.

[TheKfauw]

What's the effect of the plant while running on the battery vs broad daylight?

[tonyseba]

@TheKfauw: they have technology that continuously decides what is stored in the battery and what goes to the grid. If there is cloud cover or during the evening they draw from the battery. Either way the molten salt goes through a heat exchanger to generate steam that runs a turbine that produces electricity. This process (from steam to electricity) is the same day or night.

[jeromefloerke]

Amazing // Thank you for sharing this // Looking forward to this bright future

If you are homo sapiens technologicus you gotta love this and share it forward!

Yesterday I heard this c**p again:

"You should know that the solar energy works only during the day... how are we supposed to power our stuff at night? You see classic power plants are our only option at the moment..."

Well, dude, this is not true anymore. Let the world know

[Abnihilius]

WE MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS!!!!!

[Muso57]

Awesome!!! Bring it on and let's rid ourselves of the polluting use of fossil fuels for our energy needs. :-)

[mrplease66]

'I can take about an hour on the tower of power'

[lygonDOTnet]

I don't see any cleaning mechanisms on the actual mirrors, how do they keep them clean?

Yo no veo ningún mecanismo de limpieza en los espejos. ¿Cómo los mantienen limpios?

[Nathankzkg]

Now We need the Euclid's C-Finder.

[utubesqueeze]

Superb! Molten salts are so useful. I wish the nuclear industry had learned earlier to use them. Now it seems solar energy smartgrids are the future of energy.

[jondoig]

[0:37] "Gemasolar has 15 hours of solar thermal salt storage"

That's a bit misleading. The 500 degree C molten salt tanks are well insulated and lose only 1% of their heat each day, so the stored heat energy can last several weeks.

15 hours is how long the plant can run at full rated output (20MW) from storage, ie til it "drains the battery."