Nevada Solar One
Concentrated solar power station
- 3 min read
- 4 chapters
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In 2007, when the plant came on line, it was the second solar thermal energy (STE) power plant built in the United States in more than 16 years, and in 2007, the largest STE plant built in the world since 1991. It is located in Eldorado Valley in the southwest fringe of Boulder City, Nevada, and was built in that city's Energy Resource Zone, which requires renewable generation as part of plant development permits; Nevada Solar One was approved as part of Duke Energy's larger El Dorado Energy project, which built 1 GW of electrical generation capacity. The solar trough generation was built by Acciona Solar Power, a partially owned subsidiary of Spanish conglomerate Acciona Energy. Lauren Engineers & Constructors (Abilene, TX) was the EPC contractor for the project. Acciona purchased a 55 percent stake in Solargenix (formerly Duke Solar), and Acciona owns 95 percent of the project. Nevada Solar One is unrelated to the Solar One power plant in California.
History
In 2006, located 30 miles (48 km) north of Tucson, Arizona Public Service's Saguaro Solar Facility opened, with 1 MW of electrical generation capacity. Nevada Solar One went online for commercial use on June 27, 2007. It uses similar technology and was constructed over a period of 16 months. The total project site is approximately 400 acres (1.6 km2; 0.63 mi2), while the solar collectors cover 300 acres (1.2 km2).
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Technology
Nevada Solar One uses proprietary technology to track the sun's location and concentrate its rays during peak demand hours. The plant uses 760 parabolic trough concentrators with more than 182,000 mirrors that concentrate the sun's rays onto more than 18,240 solar receivers placed at the focal axis of the troughs. These contain a heat transfer fluid that heats up to 735 °F (391 °C) and is used to produce steam that drives a Siemens SST-700 steam turbine, adapted to the specific requirements of the CSP technology, which is connected to a generator to produce electricity.
The mirrors are manufactured by Flabeg AG in Germany. In contrast to the power tower concentrator concept that California's original Solar One project uses. The specially coated tubes, made of glass and steel, were designed and produced by Solel Solar Systems as well as by Schott Glass in Germany. Motion control was supplied by Parker Hannifin, from components by Ansco Machine Company.
Solar thermal power plants designed for solar-only generation are well matched to summer noon peak loads in areas with significant cooling demands, such as the southwestern United States. Using thermal energy storage systems, solar thermal operating periods can be extended to meet base load needs. Given Nevada's land and sun resources, the state has the theoretical ability to have more than 600 GW of electrical generation capacity using solar thermal concentrators like those used by Nevada Solar One. It has been proposed that massive expansion of solar plants such as Nevada Solar One has the potential to provide sufficient electricity to power the entire United States.
Parabolic concentrator facilities have been successfully operating in California's Mojave Desert commercially since 1984, with a combined generating capacity of 354MW from the Solar Energy Generating Systems.
Production
Nevada Solar One's production is as follows (values in GW·h).
Fossil backup, night time preservation, and morning pre-heating, is provided by natural gas and provides up to 2% of total output.
In popular culture
Nevada Solar One served as inspiration for the HELIOS One solar power plant's geographic location in the 2010 videogame Fallout: New Vegas.