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| Nevada Solar One will use solar receivers from Schott  On February 11, 2006, the ground-breaking ceremony for the 'Nevada Solar One' solar power plant took place in Boulder City, Nevada. Schott will be providing 19,300 solar receivers that will form the key components of the 64 megawatt power plant. Nevada Solar One is expected to begin providing energy to the grid in June 2007, and will produce enough electricity to meet the energy demands of about 40,000 households. The use of solar power to produce electricity at the plant, rather than fossil fuels, will result in a reduction of greenhouse gases, equivalent to removing approximately one million cars from U.S. highways.Solar thermal power plants utilize solar energy to generate heat that is then converted into electricity. Parabolic trough power plants, such as Nevada Solar One, contain thousands of trough-shaped parabolic mirrors, which concentrate sunlight onto specially coated absorber tubes located along the focal line. Solar radiation heats up the thermo-oil flowing through the receivers to almost 400°C so that downstream heat exchangers are able to generate steam. As in a conventional power plant, the steam is pressurized inside the turbines that drives the generators. Nevada Solar One represents the first parabolic trough power plant to be built in 15 years. During this time, nine such power plants located in the Mojave Desert in California have been generating solar electricity with a total output of 354 megawatts. Back then, Schott also delivered the high quality special glass tubing that were used for the receivers. In 2004, Schott developed a high-performance receiver of its own that offers substantially improved quality. This product will be put to use in Nevada. Schott is currently preparing series production of these receivers at its site in Mitterteich, Bavaria. Thanks to their extremely high efficiency and the lowest electricity production costs of all types of solar technologies, parabolic trough power plants will soon offer the potential to generate electricity in regions inside the Earth's sunbelt at costs comparable to those of power plants that run on fossil energy sources. write your comments about the article :: © 2006 Construction News :: home page |