Government of South Australia revealed plans to build single-tower solar thermal power plant
with a proposed output of 150 megawatts. The Aurora Solar Energy Project will be built by SolarReserve, one of the biggest in international solar thermal projects. The power plant slated for Port Augusta in South Australia is based with solar energy that focused by arrays of heliostats onto a central tower where molten salt technology is used to store the energy as heat to generate electricity day or night.
The total amount of energy storage capability for the project will be a massive 1100 megawatt-hours (MWh), at a much lower cost than battery storage
500 gigawatt-hours of annual output will power over 90,000 South Australia homes, day and night
The Aurora project is an example of how sustainable solutions, for energy now and in generations to come, foster new industries and create jobs by the thousands for South Australia
Because a solar thermal power plant operates like a conventional power plant, many of the jobs need the same skill sets as conventional energy jobs – from construction through operations
Aurora will be able to power 90,000 homes and generate 495 gigawatt hours of electricity per year, that is about 5% of South Australia’s energy needs. The molten salts provide 1,100 MW of energy storage, that is up to 8 hours of full load storage, that can be operated with an output of 24 hours a day. The Aurora Solar Energy Project will start the construction in 2018 and it is hopefully to produce electricity by 2020. Take a look at how SolarReserve’s molten salt energy process works in the video below.
https://www.technology.org/2017/09/08/single-tower-solar-thermal-power-plant/
