Spain uses world’s first solar thermal power plant

Spain uses world’s first solar thermal power plant

Posted by: John Pope

5 Comments

Spain uses world's first solar thermal power plantDo you think your gadget is cool? Have you ever thought how an industrial scale gadget should look like? Spain has one, the word’s first solar thermal power plant. After you read what and how it does, you might get that deja vu feeling and you’re not wrong as one Austin Powers movie has a scene with a typical industrial setup.

The solar power plant is located near Seville, in Spain, and can be described as an architectural landmark, not only an industry marvel. The engineers have constructed a 40 storeys high tower surrounded with 600 mirrors that reflect sun’s rays on top of the tower. Here heat is used to steam water, that in turn powers turbines producing electricity with zero gas emissions making for the perfect environmental friendly power plant.

The solar power plant continues to work for an hour even after sun has set, but in the future engineers hope to improve this period, increasing efficiency and lowering costs. Currently the tower produces 11 Megawatts of energy, enough to power 6000 homes, but the Spanish are installing 1000 more mirrors, hoping to counteract the solar plant’s main problem: the cost of electricity is higher that current "normal" producing methods, three times more expensive.

This is how the word's first solar thermal power plant works
This is how the word’s first solar thermal power plant works

Everybody believes that the cost problem will dissapear in the near future, as research and development costs will be shared between more plants, but being the first of its kind is good enough for now, given the problems global warming poses right now. A short movie about the solar thermal power plant can be seen here.

Source: Ubergizmo (via BBC NEWS)

  • 5 Comments till now on "Spain uses world’s first solar thermal power plant"
  • Posted by WaveRoller converts wave power into energy - Gadgetroad on May 7 2007

    [...] is moving in the right direction, in this case the fight to stop global warming. After the first solar thermal power plant from Spain it’s time to put a good use on wave kinetic energy, with WaveRoller, a device [...]

  • Posted by Katy on May 17 2007

    WOWWWWW

  • Posted by Doris on April 1 2009

    Our company Xiamen Dian Photoelectric Technology Co., Ltd is one of the manufacturers which specializing in producing the flat plate solar collectors.

  • Posted by harish on June 25 2009

    this is very expensive because of you were prepared with 600mirrors.but you canot explain in brifely.i.e how it works in internally.

  • Posted by veeresh on September 9 2009

    mainly initial cost is high

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