Kathu Solar Park (South Africa) constructed by Acciona and SENER came into commercial on 30 January

With an installed capacity of 100 MW, it will allow clean energy to be supplied to 179,000 homes in the Northern Cape region (northern South Africa) and prevent the emission of six million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere over the next 20 years. The plant incorporates SENERTrough®-2 parabolic trough collectors and a molten salt …

Chinese firm helps build world’s largest concentrated solar power complex in Morocco’s desert

In the early morning of January, as the snow covering the Atlas Mountains in central Morocco remains unmelted, the Chinese staff of the NOOR Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) projects in Ouarzazate, a city south of the mountain range, have already started a day’s work despite the freezing temperature. Photo taken on Jan. 10, 2018 shows …

China billions of Concentrated Solar Power market is open for global CSP players

In the past year of 2018, China completed a total capacity of 215 MW concentrated solar power (CSP) projects, almost 7 times of the 30 MW capacity made before 2018. China has become the No.5 country owning the biggest CSP capacity, and the most popular emerging CSP market with Morocco by contributing 23% of the …

Cerro Dominador, the first Concentrated Solar Power plant in Chile

Cerro Dominador project is a 210MW hybrid concentrated solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV) power complex under construction on a 1,000ha-site, approximately 60km away from Calama at Maria Elena in the Atacama Desert, Chile. Construction on the $1.4bn project, which consists of a 100MW PV plant and 110MW CSP plant, was started in 2014. The …

Morocco hybrid Concentrated Solar Power – PV project seen as ‘game changer’ for costs

Technology coupling gains and a favorable development framework could see prices for Morocco’s pioneering Noor Midelt hybrid projects trend towards the lowest global CSP tariffs, experts told the CSP Madrid 2018 conference. Now entering the final stages of tendering, Morocco’s Noor Midelt hybrid CSP-PV project is expected to set a benchmark price for combined CSP …

Noor Ouarzazate III central receiver concentrated solar power plant with storage completes its reliability test

The consortium formed by SENER and SEPCO III has completed the reliability test for the 150-MW Noor Ouarzazate III concentrated solar power plant. It is one more step in the start-up of the facility, which is nearing commercial operation and final delivery to the client. With this reliability test, which ran for ten straight days, …

The impact of concentrated solar power in electric power systems in Chile

This paper presents a study about the impacts of the integration of concentrated solar power (CSP) with thermal energy storage (TES) in electric power systems. The main tool for this study is a comprehensive long-term power system capacity expansion planning model that integrates a specific module to represent the operation of CSP-TES power plants. The …