The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant, jointly owned by SolarReserve, engineering and construction company, ACS Cobra and the Santander bank, is located near Tonopah in the U.S. state of Nevada. SolarReserve says that in addition to being the worlds biggest, it will also be the nations first commercial-scale solar power facility with fully integrated energy storage, when complete. According to CEO Kevin Smith, the technology has the ability to store energy for between 10 and 15 hours, thus solving the issue of intermittent power generation to the grid.
Construction began on the project last September and is scheduled to be complete by the end of 2013. Currently over 100 workers are onsite. SolarReserve says this will, however, increase to over 600 at peak construction. It is hoped that, when operational, the plant will supply enough energy for 75,000 homes. A 25-year power purchase agreement has been signed with NV Energy.
Financing was closed on the project in September. In addition to private equity investment from SolarReserve, ACS Cobra and Santander, the project received support from the U.S. Department of Energys loan guarantee program.
"Completion of the solar power tower is a significant milestone not only for SolarReserve and our plant, but also for the solar energy industry as a whole. This project is on track to bring American innovation to fruition and is already creating jobs," Smith asserted.
The topic of energy storage will be addressed at the first "Energy Storage Summit for the Storage of Renewable Energies" conference, scheduled to be held in Düsseldorf, Germany this March 13 and 14.
Popular content
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
Share
Becky Beetz
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.