Crescent Dunes CSP was developed by the Santa Monica-based SolarReserve and features the company’s market leading molten salt power tower technology with fully integrated energy storage.
The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is a 110 MW plant located near Tonopah, Nevada. Once completed, it will power up to 75,000 homes during peak electricity periods.
Project Overview
- 110 MW solar thermal power tower plant utilizing the advanced molten salt power tower technology with integrated storage.
- 25-year power purchase agreement with NV Energy to sell 100 percent of the electricity generated by the power plant.
- When completed, the facility will supply approximately 500,000 megawatt hours annually of clean, renewable electricity, enough to power 75,000 homes during peak electricity periods.
- Closed financing in September 2011, including a $737 million loan from the Department of Energy and private financing from SolarReserve, ACS Cobra and Santander.
- Construction began in September 2011.
- Under the project’s unique development agreement with Nye County, SolarReserve has committed to filling 90 percent of the construction jobs with Nevada residents, utilizing both union and non-union subcontractors.
- The project is expected to be completed in late 2013.
Key Project Benefits:
- Advances U.S. clean energy technology with the most advanced energy storage project providing clean energy, day or night.
- The energy storage inherent in the technology provides a stable and flexible electricity product to better meet Nevada’s peak demand profile and improve grid stability.
- Helps meet growing demand for clean, renewable energy sources.
- Will significantly reduce the use of water for cooling by using an efficient, low-water hybrid cooling system.
Job Creation
SolarReserve’s construction of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project will create approximately 4,300 direct, indirect and induced jobs, including more than 600 construction jobs during a 30-month period. The project will also bring additional tax revenues as well as secondary/induced economic activity to the region. During operations, the project will expend more than $10 million per year in salaries and operating costs, and is forecasted to generate $47 million in total tax revenues through the first 10 years of operation. In addition, the Crescent Dunes Project Development Agreement requires that 90 percent of the project’s construction workforce will be Nevada residents.
Domestic Economic Impacts
Tax Revenues: Project forecasted to generate $37 million in total tax revenues over the first ten years of operation.Capital Investment: Project will generate in excess of $750 million private capital cost investment in Nevada.
Reliable, Non-Variable Power Generation
Not only is the sun an unlimited fuel source, but it also provides the cleanest form of energy available at any scale. The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project utilizes energy storage, which provides operating stability for the electricity grid and a cost-effective way to meet Nevada’s peak electricity demand profile.
Clean and Secure Domestic Energy
The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project will reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil energy supplies, producing enough solar energy in one year equivalent to about one-fourth of the total output of Hoover Dam. The project uses a hybrid cooling power system so that water use is at a strict minimum in this important desert ecosystem. Solar-only energy avoids greenhouse gas emissions produced by a mid-sized fossil-fueled power plant.
SolarReserve’s technology, typically referred to as Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), uses thousands of mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a central point to generate heat, which in turn is used to generate electricity.
More than 10 thousand tracking mirrors called heliostats reside in a 1,500 acre field, where they reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a large heat exchanger called a receiver that sits atop a 550-foot tower.
Within the receiver, fluid flows through the piping that forms the external walls; this fluid absorbs the heat from the concentrated sunlight. In SolarReserve’s technology, the fluid utilized is molten salt, which is heated from 500 to over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Molten salt is an ideal heat capture medium, as it maintains its liquid state even above 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing the system to operate at low pressure for convenient energy capture and storage. After passing through the receiver, the molten salt then flows down the piping inside the tower and into a thermal storage tank, where the energy is stored as high-temperature molten salt until electricity is needed.
SolarReserve’s technology leverages liquid molten salt as both the energy collection and the storage mechanism, which allows it to separate energy collection from electricity generation. When electricity is required by the utility, day or night, the high-temperature molten salt flows into the steam generator, as water is piped in from the water storage tank, to generate steam.
Once the hot salt is used to create steam, the cooled molten salt is then piped back into the cold salt storage tank where it will then flow back up the receiver to be reheated as the process continues.
After the steam is used to drive the steam turbine, it is condensed back to water and returned to the water holding tank, where it will flow back into the steam generator when needed. After the molten salt passes though the steam generator, it flows back to the cold tank and is re-used throughout the life of the project. The hot molten salt generates high-quality superheated steam to drive a standard steam turbine at maximum efficiency to generate reliable, non-intermittent electricity during peak demand hours.
The steam generation process is identical to the process used in conventional gas, coal or nuclear power plants, except that it is 100 percent renewable with zero harmful emissions or waste. SolarReserve plants provide on-demand, reliable electricity from a renewable source—the sun—even after dark.