171 Million Euros Secured to Fund Gemasolar the World’s First Solar Power Plant with Central Tower and Salt Receiver Technology

Wednesday, Jan 21, 2020

Torresol Energy, the strategic alliance between Spanish engineering group SENER and Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s multi faceted renewable energy initiative, has today announced a 171 million euro financing deal which will allow construction to commence on Gemasolar.

Masdar is driven by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (ADFEC), a wholly owned company of the government of Abu Dhabi through the Mubadala Development Company.

Gemasolar is the world’s first utility grade solar power plant with central tower and salt receiver technology and will provide clean and safe energy as well as create more than 1,500 jobs in Spain. The plant is located in Fuentes de Andalucía, in Seville.

The funding which has been secured through the open market with Banco Popular, Banesto and the Instituto de Crédito Oficial acting as mandated lead arrangers, highlights the attractive proposition that the strategic alliance offers in this challenging financial market.

The plant will be operational in 2011 and will produce 17MWe of renewable energy reducing C02 emissions by more than 50,000 tonnes a year.

“The construction of Gemasolar represents a gigantic step forwards in Torresol’s technological development and positions us as world leaders in central tower solar thermal projects”, said Enrique Sendagorta, Torresol Energy’s Chairman.” This strategic alliance brings the best of Abu Dhabi and Spain together to help drive forward the large scale deployment of renewable energy projects. The response of the financial markets is further proof that the industry will continue to advance. “

The project is the first of its kind in the world due to the application of this technology in a commercial environment. The project will open the way for a new solar thermal electricity generation technology that is a better alternative to cylindrical – parabolic type commercial solar thermal power plants that are currently being built.

“Gemasolar is an important milestone for the CSP industry and its success is likely to revolutionize this industry“ said Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, Chief Executive Officer at Masdar. “Masdar is very excited at the prospect that this technology promises to deliver and look forward to building similar but larger capacity towers in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere using this technology.”

The EPC contract has been awarded to a consortium, including SENER and AMSA, a ACS Cobra subsidiary. In the consortium, SENER will be in charge of providing the technology, the detail design and commissioning of the plant. The technology includes the receiver, critical part in this type of plants, which is able to absorb 95% of the radiation from the sun’s spectrum and transmit this energy to the salt compound that circulates within the receiver, as well as the Sensol software for sizing and optimising the plant. The technology provided includes the innovative thermal molten salts storage system, which is capable of reaching temperatures over 500 degrees centigrade.

In terms of performance and operation, the technology inherent within the Gemasolar plant will treble electricity production in the rest of the thermoelectric solar power plants with the same power but under conventional technology basis. This is due to the fact that the majority of thermoelectric plants, that are being developed, do not have a thermal storage system, whilst Gemasolar has high temperature heat storage that extends the normal operating period of these plants.

Salts, made up by sodium and potassium nitrates, are kept molten using the solar energy collected from the heliostats, so that they store excess accumulated heat during sunshine hours, which makes it possible to continue to produce electricity even when there is not enough solar radiation.

Due to this advanced technology, Gemasolar’s autonomy will be 15 hours without sunlight. Furthermore, the high temperature at which solar energy in captured in the salt receiver allows to have more pressurised and hotter steam, which considerably increases the steam turbine’s performance.

About Torresol Energy, S.A.

Torresol Energy, a company set up in March 2008, with a 60% SENER stockholding and 40% Masdar stockholding (company for the development of renewable energies launched by the investment company belonging to the Abu Dhabi Emirate, MUBADALA Development Company). The new company was set up with the objective to become the world´s leader in the sector and with the aim of promoting the development and exploitation of an average of two large solar thermal energy plants around the world, particularly in the so-called “sunny belt’: Southern Europe, Northern Africa, the Middle-East and Southwest USA. According to these forecasts, the production capability will be 320 MW at the end of 2010 and should reach 1,000 MW in 10 years. At the same time, each new Torresol Energy project will introduce and test new technologies with the aim of making Concentration Solar energy an economically competitive option and a real, viable, ecological and sustainable alternative to traditional power sources.

www.torresolenergy.com

About SENER Ingeniería y Sistemas, S.A.

SENER Ingeniería y Sistemas has been present for years in the renewable energy field. It started to work in the solar energy field in the 1980s and since then it has made considerable progress in solar energy technology. SENER has developed software, with the Sensol computer programme, which allows to size and optimise plants, to components, such as the heliostats, heliostat axis drive mechanisms, tower receivers, storage systems, direct steam generation systems and beam-down or plant control systems, as well as cylindrical-parabolic collectors. In the case of collectors, SENER has patented the SENERtrough design, with an appreciably lower steel weight and assembly time than other similar collectors. However, the big technological difference of SENER’s solar thermal plants lies in the innovative molten salts storage system, which doubles the energy exploitation level of a conventional thermosolar power station.

SENER’s capacity for anticipation in the Concentrating Solar Power field, as well as its ambitious technological development programme have always been directed at obtaining electricity from solar energy on a large scale, and the company is therefore the leader in cost efficient solar innovations. In this sense, SENER offers practical solutions that can be seen and tested, being Gemasolar the seventh solar project SENER has developed.

At the moment, SENER is taking part in four thermosolar projects under construction for several customers. They are two 50 MW plants with SENERtrough cylindrical-parabolic technology, Andasol 1, in operation, and Andasol 2, currently being built, in the province of Granada near Guadix, in a consortium with ACS-Cobra, and two plants, Extresol 1 and Extresol 2, that are being built in Extremadura. The company is also taking part in other projects, whose construction will be spread over 2008 and 2009, concerning similar plants to those mentioned above located in Andalusia, Extremadura and Castile-la Mancha.

SENER is an engineering, consultancy and systems integration company that has become an international benchmark engineering firm in the Aerospace, Civil and Architecture, Energy and Process and Marine Engineering sectors. It has a workforce of more than 2,000 employees and a turnover of over 350 million euros, with offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia, Seville, Algiers, Buenos Aires, Lisbon, Mexico DF, Okayama (Japan), San Francisco and Warsaw. SENER Ingeniería y Sistemas forms part of SENER Grupo de Ingeniería, one of the largest Spanish engineering groups, with more than 4,500 employees and a turnover of over 753 million euros.

www.sener.es

About Masdar

The Masdar Initiative is Abu Dhabi’s multi-faceted, multibillion dollar investment in the development and commercialization of innovative technologies in renewable, alternative and sustainable energies as well as sustainable design. Masdar is driven by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (ADFEC), a wholly owned company of the government of Abu Dhabi through the Mubadala Development Company. In January 2008, Abu Dhabi announced it will invest $15 billion in Masdar, the largest single government investment of its kind.  For more information about the Masdar Initiative, please visit www.masdaruae.com.

Source: Torresol Energy