SolarReserve to Build Utility-Scale Molten Salt Storage for Solar Power
Filed Under: Green Technology on December 28, 2009
A company called SolarReserve has signed a eal with NV Energy, a Nevada power company, to supply a molten salt storage system for solar power storage.
The company, based in Santa Monica, California, has agreed to sell 25 years of off-peak power to NV Energy to store and sell back to the tune of 480,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually. A concentrating solar collector will heat salt, liquefying it into a molten state. The super-heated salt will then be used to heat water and turn a turbine, producing power overnight when the sun is not supplying solar arrays. This power will be sold to the utility.
Here’s a diagram of how this works:
The plant will be built at a facility in Tonapah, Nevada beginning sometime next year, pending approval from the Nevada Public Utilities Commission.
California’s power utility, PG&E, has also signed a deal with SolarReserve for their energy storage facility at Rice Airfield in San Bernardino County, California. That project is still awaiting approval of state regulators. It’s a solar power plant scheduled to deliver 150 megawatts of power by 2013.
Pretty cool developments. Molten salt is one of the most efficient ways of storing heat energy from the sun, especially in areas that do not tend to get cold in the winter. Many molten storage facilities can be 99% efficient, losing very little of their heat energy to the atmosphere.
