The contents of the agreement establish that Schneider Electric will be responsible for designing, producing and implementing the Solar Field System and the Distributed Control System. The Solar Field System will control the orientation of Gemasolar’s 2,650 heliostats and will coordinate, monitor and record their performance. Meanwhile, the Distributed Control System will manage the operations of the receiver tower, molten salt flows and steam generation. Other auxiliary services will also be controlled to ensure the plant achieves an output of 17 MW.
The agreement was reached after two years of collaboration with Sener, the engineering firm responsible for the process, to design and define the project. These solutions, valued at €5 million, will maximise safety at the plant, ensure system continuity, and optimise the performance of the entire energy generation process.
Gemasolar is being developed by Torresol Energy and is the only commercial-scale demonstration project under development consisting of a central tower receiver, heliostats and molten salts storage energy system. Indeed, it is the only plant in the world to use this technology, which is capable of raising the temperature of the heat transfer fluid to 500ºC. The plant in Andalusia (Spain) will provide enough energy for 24,000 homes and will avoid over 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per annum.
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