And although a handful of other concentrating solar plants around the world use solar rays to heat water directly into steam, it is much more volatile than molten salt and cannot be easily stored, Ho explains. It can be pumped just like water and stored in tanks just like water, says Cliff Ho, an engineer at Sandia National Laboratories who studies heat transfer and fluid mechanics for technologies such as concentrating solar power, but is not involved in Crescent Dunes. Molten salt’s physical and thermal properties make it a particularly good candidate for energy storage. The rest of the time, the molten salt can be stored in another insulated tank on the ground. When electricity is needed, the hot salt is used to boil water and produce high-temperature, high-pressure steam, which turns turbines that generate electricity. There the molten salt can reach temperatures as high as 565 degrees Celsius. The trick is to have all those mirrors heat up a massive tank fullof sodium and potassium nitrates that are pumped up to the top of the tower. Large tracking mirrors, called heliostats, follow the sun throughout the day, reflecting and concentrating sunlight onto the top of Crescent Dunes’ central tower. We can turn on when they want us to turn on and we can turn off when they want us to turn off,” SolarReserve CEO Kevin Smith says. “We can ramp up electricity generation for utilities based on the demand. The facility is touted as being the first solar power plant that can store more than 10 hours of electricity, which translates into 1,100 megawatt-hours, enough to power 75,000 homes. But the facility’s innovation lies in the fact that it can store electricity and make it available on demand any time-day or night.Ĭrescent Dunes, the flagship project of Santa Monica–based firm SolarReserve, has achieved what engineers and proponents of renewable energy have struggled with for decades: providing cheap, commercial-scale, non–fossil fuel electricity even when winds are calm or the sun is not shining. The Crescent Dunes “ concentrating solar power” plant looks like some advanced communication device for aliens. It is surrounded by more than 10,000 billboard-size mirrors focusing the sun’s rays on its tip. Credit: SolarReserveĭeep in the Nevada desert, halfway between Las Vegas and Reno, a lone white tower stands 195 meters tall, gleaming like a beacon. The 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Facility in Nevada is the first utility-scale concentrating solar plant that can provide electricity whenever it’s needed most, even after dark. A California firm is converting sunlight to heat and storing it in molten salt so it can supply electricity when the wind is calm or the sun isn’t shining.
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