Europe's First Solar Tower Power Plant

At the end of March 2007, Europe's first commercial concntrated solar power plant was inaugurated in Seville, South West Spain. A total of 624 large (120 square metre) moveable mirrors called heliostats track and focus the sun's rays to a single solar receiver at the top of a 115 metre tall tower.

Concentrated Solar Power is a technology which has remained out of the public domain. Though increasingly popular in the 1970's and 1980's - falling oil prices stopped most development of (and interest in) concentrated solar power until recently. Now in the USA, Spain, Israel and a few other locations new CSP plants are being built - for example Nevada solar one a 64MW power station being built near to Las Vegas.

At the end of March 2007, Europe's first commercial concntrated solar power plant was inaugurated in Seville, South West Spain. A total of 624 large (120 square metre) moveable mirrors called heliostats track and focus the sun's rays to a single solar receiver at the top of a 115 metre tall tower.

At temperatures of up to 250 degrees Celcius the solar receiver turns water into steam which turns a steam turbine generator also located in the tower producing electricity.

The new plant, PS10 (Planta Solar 10), is the first commercial solar thermoelectric power plant in the world and has a peak capacity of 11MW - sufficient to generate 23 million kWh of electricity per year powering 6,000 homes and saving 18,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. The plant took four years to build with construction finishing at the end of 2005 and has so far cost 35 million Euro. Construction was led by Solucar, an Albengoa company.
A second power tower, PS20 is being constructed which will produce around a peak of around 20MW of electricity. Construction began in October 2006.

PS10 is the first of a series of concentrated solar power plants which will total 300 MW of peak capacity by 2013 - enough to power almost 200,000 homes. The total cost of the project is in excess of 1.2 billion Euro.