Abengoa Solar has been selected by Xcel Energy (NYSE: XEL), Colorado’s largest electric utility company, to build a demonstration parabolic trough concentrating solar power (CSP) plant at its Cameo coal plant near Grand Junction, Colorado. The project is one of the first to integrate an industrial solar installation into a conventional electrical power plant.
Construction is expected to start within a month and the plant is expected to be operational by the end of the year.
The goal of the project is to prove that the heat produced by a solar facility can increase the efficiency of a conventional power plant while also lowering carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Successful integration of this technology may enable future large-scale applications of this technology into other power plants, the companies said in a release.
"If this demonstration works, we may be able to implement this type of technological advance in other coal-fired power plants to help further reduce carbon dioxide emissions in Colorado and possibly other areas of our service territory," said David Wilks, President of Energy Supply for Xcel Energy.
This four thermal megawatt solar installation will use parabolic trough collectors developed by Abengoa Solar.
Parabolic trough technology can be used for both electricity generation as well as for producing thermal energy for industrial processes. Abengoa Solar’s industrial parabolic trough technology installation utilizes collectors that track the sun during the daytime in order to concentrate solar radiation onto a heat-absorbing pipe located at the focal line of the parabola. The heated fluid that circulates through the pipe reaches high temperatures and, by means of a heat exchanger, produces energy that can be used to generate steam, to heat water or air, or to run an absorption machine for an air conditioning system.
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